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COPYINGUT DEPOSIT. 














THE OUGHT TO BE'S 


REV. JC T. ROCHE, 

u 


Author of 

4i The Obligation of Hearing Mass/' 

44 Our Lady of Guadalupe,” 

44 Belief and Unbelief,” 

“ Month of St. Joseph for People in the World,” 
Etc., Etc. 


ST. LOUIS, MO., and FREIBURG (BADEN). 

Published by B. Herder, 

1906. 





LIBRARY of OONftRESS 
Two Copies Received 

DEC 28 190S 

* Copyright Entry . 

sup, X G , ff&V 

CLASS A XXc„No. 

K ^6 L 'I 

COPY B. / 



NIHIL OBSTAT. 

S. Ludovici, die 22. Octobris 1906. 

F. G. HOLWECK, 
Censor Theologicus. 


IMPRIMATUR. 

S. Ludovici, die 23. Octobris 1906. 
O. J. S. HOOG, V. G. 


Copyright, 1906, by Joseph Gummersbach. 


LTV 






PREFACE. 

The articles herein put into permanent form ap¬ 
peared originally in the Catholic Standard and Times 
of Philadelphia, Pa. They were written with the hope 
that here and there, they might, with God’s help, re¬ 
new the courage of those who have thrown down their 
arms and deserted the standard of Christ. It cannot 
be repeated too often in the ears of a sin-laden 
humanity that unrepentence, not sin, has peopled the 
Abodes of Darkness, that so long as life lasts, so long 
does the mercy of God reach out lovingly to the most 
miserable and wretched of sinners, and finally that so 
long as the world endures, so long will Mary, the 
Mother of God. be the last hope and sure refuge of 
even the most abandoned of sinners. 

There is a deep-seated belief everywhere in the 
Church that a renewal of devotion to Mary is the un¬ 
failing means, whereby the “ought-to-be” can be, 
easily and sweetly, brought back to God. May She. 
out of the superabundance of her Charity and Mercy, 
extend her favor and protection to him who writes and 
to those who read. 








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CHAPTER I. 

What Shall it Be ? 


Hard to Reach. 


The Ought-to-Be Catholic is a hard man to reach 
He does not go to church; he seldom reads a Catholic 
periodical; he is rarely surrounded by those influences 
which make for his conversion. The personal visit of 
the priest and the judicious distribution of literature 
bearing upon his case are almost the only means 
which can be employed to win him back to the path 
of duty. 

Yes, there is another, and perhaps the most effec¬ 
tive of all. It is the apostolate of earnest men and 
women, whose words, but particularly whose example, 
will succeed when all things else have failed. From 
the beginning good example has been the best argu¬ 
ment. It is particularly effective with those who have 
wandered from the fold. It is a proof that they also 
can lead virtuous lives if they will. 


Whence Recruited. 


The army of ought-to-be Catholics is recruited 
mainly from those who lead bad lives. I have never 
heard of a genuinely good Catholic giving up the 
practice of his or her religion. I have personally met 
hundreds of bad ones who have. 






“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


There is no mystery about the matter. Habitual 
mortal sin has filled the world with stray sheep. This 
is a fact as old as Christianity. It needs no proof. 

In diagnosing a disease and prescribing a remedy, 
it is necessary to go to the root of the evil. The 
root of almost all the defection from the Church is 
simply and plainly sin, and that species of sin whose 
wages are eternal death. 

There are sheep astray from the fold because they 
will not hear the voice of the Great Shepherd of Souls. 
There are recreant children who will not obey and 
keep His commandments. There are the weak, who 
have become discouraged long ago, and who feel that 
it is useless for them to strive after righteousness 
weighted down as they are with the burden of sinful 
inclinations and vicious habits. There are those who 
have grown old in evil ways, who appear as if aband¬ 
oned to a reprobate sense, and who deem it too late 
to retrace their steps and begin their spiritual lives 
anew. These there are and a thousand other forms 
of the same spiritual malady, having as their root the 
ancient spirit of rebellion on the part of the intelligent 
creature against the Creator, who gave it being and 
intelligence and made it free. 


The Greatest Inroad. 


This is particularly true of the young men of the 
present day. They have given up the Church only 
when vice has woven its web so firmly about them that 
escape seems impossible. Drunkenness and impuritv, 
and particularly the latter, tell the whole story. The 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


7 


Sixth Commandment has been the greatest stumbling 
block. The young man who approaches the sacra¬ 
ments frequently will never become an unbeliever. 
He will never deny the existence of hell until he has 
become morally convinced that he cannot escape it. He 
will never proclaim that he has come up from the 
lower animals until he has surrendered himself, wholly 
and entirely, to his animal nature. He will never at¬ 
tack the faith of his fathers until despair of living up 
to it has settled in his soul. 

Some one has said that if there were another passion 
in the human heart as strong as the sexual tendency, 
it would be impossible to impose moral restrictions 
upon humanity. Impurity, in some of its various 
forms, has been at the bottom of nearly all the great 
rebellions against the Church. It has made, and still 
makes, “ought-to-be’s” out of countless thousands of 
those whom the Church most needs and most values— 
its young men, those who ought to be its pride and its 
joy in the day of victory, its hope and comfort in the 
hour of trial. 


A Doctrine to Fit. 


By a strange perversity of the human heart, the 
vicious are always found ready to justify themselves 
for failure to serve God. They will go further and lay 
the blame for their shortcomings on God Himself 
God, they claim, has made them as they are, and they 
cannot help being what they are. They forget that 
this impious doctrine justifies every species and char¬ 
acter of crime, and leads to the subversion of all law 



8 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S’ 


and order. All the laws of the world are based on 
the principle that man is a free being; that he is capa¬ 
ble of choosing between right and wrong. The divine 
laws are based on the same principle. Theology 
teaches that the crowning act of Gods creation is the 
free, intelligent being, free with the terrible power to 
rise up and disobey God Himself; that in the love and 
obedience of this being, God is exceedingly pleased, 
but that those who abuse their freedom and disobey 
shall have no part with Him in His Kingdom. 

Some spiritual writer has said that, “with the excep¬ 
tion of the predestined souls, such as our Immaculate 
Mother, and the baptized little ones, every being gifted 
with intelligence has been placed on trial.” The angels 
had their period of probation. Some were unfaithful 
and were cast out forever. So shall it be with the un¬ 
faithful amongst men. A freedom without punish¬ 
ments as well as rewards is inconceivable. 

New in Name Only. 


New in Name Only. 


I know not if the present age be more corrupt and 
more luxurious than the ages which have preceded it, 
but this I do know, that the lot of the Church in this 
country is cast in dangerous places. A great wave of 
religious indifference is sweeping across the land. 
Much of our so-called Christianity is incipient unbe¬ 
lief. There is a universal breaking up of the founda¬ 
tions of men’s faith. Morals are woefully relaxed. Is 
it any wonder, then, that the Church should find it a 
hard task to reclaim the weak and the erring? 



‘THE OUGHT TO BE’S’ 


9 


Every priest in the land knows well that the “ought- 
to-be” is only another name for the sinner who has 
sinned and will not repent. I return, therefore, to 
the point from which I started. Mortal sin in some 
form is the root of all defection. Men may call it by 
other names and justify themselves on specious pre¬ 
texts, but the verdict of the ages is against them. The 
grace of repentance is the one great need of all ought- 
to-be’s. 


What Shall it Be? 

There comes a time in the lives of all careless and 
indifferent Catholics when they must honestly ask 
themselves the question: What shall it be? Light 
and peace or doubt and darkness; faith and practice 
or impiety and unbelief? There comes a time when 
the choice must be made. Sometimes, alas, it comes 
with the coming of the Savior, like a thief in the 
night. Sometimes it comes as God’s last call to re¬ 
pentance. Sometimes it comes out of the abundance 
of His mercy in response to the prayers of sainted 
men and women. But come it will, and then the choice 
must be made, and made, perhaps, forever. 

What shall it be? Ask yourself the question, dear 
reader, if you be a careless Catholic, and answer it be¬ 
fore it be too late. Remember, too, that prayer is the 
first step in the prodigal’s return. There is always 
hope so long as the knee is bent in prayer. 



10 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


CHAPTER II. 

The Cause of Causes. 


The Parent Sin. 


Missing Mass on Sundays is the parent sin. It is 
the cause of causes when there is a question of defec¬ 
tion. Human respect, scandal, bad literature and evil 
associations have slain their thousands; Mass missing 
has slain its tens of thousands. The Church has no 
anxiety about sinners who hear Mass on Sundays: 
it distrusts the sanctity of every man and woman who 
holds that dut\ lightly. 

The reasons are plain. The Mass-misser deliberately 
cuts himself off from the very things which go to keep 
him faithful. Everything in and around the church 
reminds him of what he is and what he ought to be. 
Were it only the nearness, the divine tenderness and 
the unspeakable goodness of the Lamb of God in the 
Eucharistic mystery—that would be more than enough 
The mute appeal of the Real Presence, with its pathos 
and feebleness, is never lost upon the soul so long as 
a single particle of faith remains. Add to this the 
association of the church, with all that is holiest and 
best in childhood and youth, the remembrance of the 
vows and pledges of maturer years, as well as the 
memories of graces resisted and opportunities wasted. 
Add to all this again a species of priestly participa- 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


11 


tion in the dwine ceremony of the Mass, the great 
sacrifice, in which the victim lays aside the outward 
vesture of the divinity, in order that mankind, in union 
with Him, may have a worship worthy of God. And 
this is not all. The Mass-misser cuts himself off from 
the Living Word imparted in the sermons and instruc¬ 
tions of the priest. This is almost as necessary for 
his preservance as divine grace itself. Man is so con¬ 
stituted that he needs to be frequently reminded of the 
truth of salvation. Forgetfulness as well as ignorance 
begets impiety. 

Many who were born and brought up Catholics are 
now lost to the Church, because of their having been 
placed in circumstances that rendered difficult the ful¬ 
fillment of the obligation of hearing Mass; but many 
more were lost because of their failure to realize its 
gravity. Any priest of experience will tell you that 
there are two classes of Catholics to whose future he 
looks forward with much anxiety. One is the off¬ 
spring of careless parents, the other is the Mass-mhser. 


A World’s Wonder. 


Sunday observance among Catholics astonishes and 
edifies the woild of our day. Empty churches is the 
problem of the hour amongst non-Catholics. With¬ 
out any attempt at sensationalism or the modern 
methods of pious advertising, the Mass continues to 
fill our churches. Outsiders, not understanding the 
Mass, cannot understand why this should be so. Some 
call it superstition, and let it go at that. Others look 
deeper, but deem the doctrine enshrined in the Mass 



12 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


too incredible for human belief. To all believers, 
however, the Mass-misser is an object of scandal. 
His negligence is ever to their minds an evidence of 
disbelief. No man, they rightly argue, can believe in 
so wonderful a doctrine and act as he does; and hence 
it is that scarcely any one can culpably omit hearing 
Mass on Sunday without giving grave scandal, whether 
it be to the members of his own household or to others 
within and without the fold who are witnesses of his 
example. 

One of the greatest victories the Devil ever achieved 
in the world was when he deprived poor heretics of the 
Holy Sacrifice. Catholics of the above class relieve 
the Devil of much anxiety in their regard. He looks 
upon them in the same light as he does upon those who 
are not devout to the Blessed Virgin. They offer ex¬ 
cellent material for future heretics. 


Largely Pretexts. 


There are circumstances which render the fulfill¬ 
ment of this obligation physically impossible, or so 
difficult as to be considered morally so. Physical ina¬ 
bility, a grave or urgent necessity, the duties of one’s 
office and the claims of just obedience are universally 
regarded as exempting causes. There is little need of 
going more fully into this matter. The legislation of 
the Church is applied common sense, and never de¬ 
mands the unreasonable or the impossible. The ex¬ 
cuses of the Mass missers, however, are frequently 
pretexts. It is hot or it is cold; it is wet or it is dry. 
The heat prostrates them, the cold benumbs them, the 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


13 


rain dampens their ardor and the snows of winter chill 
their fervor. There are children to take care of and 
household duties to perform. There are excursions 
for pleasure and business trips for profit. There is 
physical indisposition, which unfits for duty but never 
interferes with pleasure. There is sloth, which is dig¬ 
nified with the name of rest, and greed, which is digni¬ 
fied with the name of necessity. There are Saturday 
night revels and Sunday amusements which are fre¬ 
quently far from being innocent, but they are all 
sufficient to serve as pretexts for the careless and 
negligent. 

There is the old excuse, too, that the church is 
afar off, even though the same distance be regarded as 
of little consequence when it is a question of pleasure 
or profit. It is a grievous matter when it is a question 
of saving one’s immortal soul. 


The Prodigal’s Return. 


The campaign to reclaim the ought-to-be’s must be¬ 
gin right here. Get them to go to church on Sunday 
and the rest is easy. They must return along the same 
road by which they left. Here and there a conversion 
is miraculously made, but ordinarily the process re¬ 
sembles that by which the sinner fell from grace. 

The Mass is the sun and centre of Catholic faith 
and Catholic life. Men cannot draw close to its 
mysteries without renewing their allegiance to Him 
who is the victim and the high priest of the sacrifice. 



14 


‘THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


CHAPTER III. 

The Lost Soul. 


Letters of a Lost Soul. 


I have in my possession copies of three letters that 
were given by the late Abbe Hogan to a Boston priest, 
now also deceased. Those letters stand in a class all 
by themselves. I have never seen anything like them 
in ancient or modern literature. I have labeled them, 
though I hope incorrectly, “Letters of a Lost Soul.” 

It appears that the abbe and the writer of those 
letters had been students together in the old Seminary 
of Saint-Sulpice, Paris, and had received the tonsure 
together. Shortly afterwards the young Levite fell 
heir to a large fortune, left to him by an uncle in Peru. 
He almost immediately decided that he had no vocation 
to a clerical life, and so left the seminary for South 
America, where his newly-acquired possessions were. 
For several years afterwards he kept up a corre¬ 
spondence with his old college chum, but in the course 
of time their letters grew less frequent and finally 
ceased altogether. In the meantime the young abbe 
had risen to a position of eminence among the fathers 
of Saint-Sulpice, and was at this time, if I remember 
rigthly, the president of the world-famous seminary in 
Paris of that name. According to the letters, a period 
of some thirty years must have elapsed from the time 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


15 


of their separation, and the wanderer, returning to 
the great city, discovers that his old friend is still 
alive and is doing the Master’s work faithfully and 
well. He goes to hear him preach, and comes away 
with the impression that he is still the earnest and 
zealous Levite of the olden days. He himself has 
nothing left but the remnant of a ruined and dissipated 
life. His body is a prey to disease, and, at the best, 
only a few months of life remain. He has come to 
Paris to be there when the curtain closes, and, sitting 
at the window of his room, he is listening, as he 
writes the first letter, to the bells of Christmas Eve. 
The time and the occasion are propitious. 


The Diabolical Spirit. 

He looks out from his window upon the little chil¬ 
dren dressed in white hastening to take part in some 
childish drama bearing upon the great Nativity. He 
hates the children, he tells the abbe as he writes. 
They bring back to him the memory of the days when, 
he too, was an innocent child, and the remembrance 
of how far he has wandered from the ways of rigth- 
eousness fills his bosom with a diabolical hatred for 
the innocence and purity of all children. He cannot 
help remembering, in spite of himself, and as he 
writes a great day in his young life comes up before 
him. It is the day on which, kneeling bv the side of 
his young friend, he pronounces the words of the sacred 
tonsure, “Thou art the portion of my inheritance and 
my cup. Thou it is who wilt restore my inheritance 
to me.” Since that day he has wandered far from 



16 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


God. With every means at his disposal for the grati¬ 
fication of his passions, he has sought for happiness in 
sinful pleasure, and with the usual result. The happi¬ 
ness which he has found has been of the counterfeit 
variety. It has left him a physical and moral wreck, 
and his wasted life, as he looks back upon it, seems to 
be filled with bitterness and vain regret. 


The Pride of Lucifer. 

He will not, however, as he says, “fling the dregs of 
a wasted life in God’s face.” He will have none of 
“the death-bed repentance.” He has run his course in 
open defiance of God and His commandments, and he 
will die as he has lived. He has, by his own acts, 
unfitted his soul to dwell with the saints in light, and 
so he is ready to dwell with the spirits of darkness 
for ever and ever. Such is the purport of the first 
letter. The second goes more fully into detail as to 
his life. The third and last was written on the eve of 
his death by his own hand. In none of them did he 
give the venerable abbe a single clue which might 
enable him to seek him out and save him. When he 
found physical pain unbearable he snapped the thread 
of life and went to meet his God, as he himself said, 
“without a crv of repentance on his lips.” 


An Argument for Hell. 


There is a remarkable passage in one of those 
letters. It is this: “I believe in hell. If there be a 
God at all, there must be a hell. The good and the 




“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


17 


evil cannot dwell together in peace in this life; they 
must be separated in the next. If this soul of mine 
be immortal, and I believe it is, a future life among 
the virtuous and the good would be a species of punish¬ 
ment. I have dwelt so long among the depraved and 
the wicked and the ungodly that the company of the 
saints would be intolerable. I feel that life is a process 
of evolution, and from that evolution flows the retribu¬ 
tive justice.” “As ye sow so shall ye reap.” The 
closing words of the last letter are full of pathos: 
“Adieu, my friend. Our boyhood’s friendship was 
sweet and pleasant to me. My example may help 
to strengthen you in your conflict. I do not mean to 
grieve you, and I am not wanting in courage. Adieu.” 


A Doubt. 


It seems incredible that such letters should have been 
written by one who appears to have retained a species 
of faith down to the very last, and yet such cases are 
not unusual. Those who give themselves up entirely 
to the lusts and pleasure of the world seem to acquire 
a species of diabolical spirit, in which pride shuts them 
out forever from repentance. They appear to fore¬ 
stall the condemnation of the immediate judgment and 
to judge themselves with justice. It is one of the most 
terrible forms which impiety can assume, and one 
which ought to make every “ought-to-be” stop and 
think. God giant, however, that the author of those 
letters belied his own prediction, and in his last 
moments raised his eyes and heart to the throne of 
mercy. I feel, somehow, that the prayers of the good 



18 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


priest now dead must have prevailed in the end over 
the arch-enemy of souls. 

One thought strikes me in closing. How strange 
it is that sinners will believe the Devil, the father of 
lies, when he whispers into their hearts, “There is no 
use; it is too late; your sins are too great for forgive¬ 
ness;” and that they will not believe the God of Truth 
when He assures them that His mercy and forgiveness 
pursue them, even unto the end! 


CHAPTER IV. 

A Fatal Defect. 


A Strange Story. 


There is a strange story told in the life of a famous 
French priest known as Father Bernard, “the priest 
of the poor.” He lived in Paris in the early part of 
the eighteenth century, and was the contemporary and 
friend of the famous Father Olier, founder of the 
Priests of Saint-Sulpice. 

In his early days he had been a prodigal of the most 
pronounced type. He had given up not only his 
faith, but he had conceived such a hatred of Christi¬ 
anity that he undertook a journey to Turkey, in order 
to offer his services to the Sultan in the wars which 
were being waged against the Christian powers. The 
journey overland was in those days beset with many 
dangers. On one occasion he was captured by a robber 



“The; ought to bets” 


19 


band, who, after stripping him of all that he had, 
decided to murder him and hide his body. In this 
extremity he appealed to Mary, the mother of God, and 
vowed that if she should deliver him from his present 
peril he would return to his country and do penance 
for his misspent life. The robbers suddenly and un¬ 
expectedly changed their minds and rode away, leav¬ 
ing him unharmed. 

With the disappearance of danger, all desire to fulfill 
his vow also disappeared. He continued on his jour¬ 
ney, entered the Turkish army and fought against 
the Christians in many battles. One night he had a 
dream or vision. He thought he heard Satan demand¬ 
ing his soul of God. The fallen spirit reminded God 
that He had condemned him and numerous other spirits 
to hell because of one sin, whilst He continued to let 
this monster of iniquity live, in spite of his manifold 
offenses, and all because, in order to save his miserable 
life, he had made a vow to Mary which he had never 
kept. He demanded the soul of this great sinner 
without further delay, and reproached Him for having 
permitted the Immaculate Mother to interfere, not 
only then, but time after time, with the workings of 
His divine justice. 

The vision or dream made so vivid an impression 
upon him that he immediately resigned his position and 
returned to France, where he set about preparing him¬ 
self for the priesthood. The balance of his life was 
one of rigid penance and unexampled zeal for the 
conversion of sinners. 


20 


THE OUGHT TO BE’S : > 


A Weak Spot. 


This little story illustrates what I am about to say. 
There seems to be a special Providence over the clients 
of Mary, a something which keeps them steadfast to 
the faith when others similarly situated become cast¬ 
aways. They may grow remiss in their duties for a 
time; they may even give up the practice of their 
religion for years, but sooner or later they turn to the 
path of duty. I have never known any one who had 
confidence in Mary’s power to become a doubter or 
an unbeliever. I have known hundreds of sinners 
whose conversion was due entirely and wholly to the 
confidence which they retained in her goodness and 
mercy. I am not writing a sermon. I am treating- 
simply of a matter which is eminently practical, and 
one which enters minutely into the conversion of all 
sinners. I am laying down a proposition which is sup¬ 
ported by the opinion of great saints, and it is this: 
there is little hope for the conversion of a sinner who 
has in his heart no trace of devotion to Mary. 

There are few priests exercising the sacred ministry 
today who cannot recall some miracle of grace as the 
result of a sinner’s appeal to the great Mother of God. 
There are few, if any, who can recall a single con¬ 
version in which this element of devotion was wanting. 

I go further still and assert that there are few 
Catholics, even amongst the intelligent and well instruc¬ 
ted, who fully realize the all-important place which 
Christ has given to His Immaculate Mother in the 
plan of human salvation. Too many seem to regard 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


21 


devotion to her in the light of some of the minor de¬ 
votions of the Church. They regard it as an acci¬ 
dental rather than one of the great essentials of re¬ 
ligion. They have yet to learn that what St. Paul said 
of heaven can be truly said of Mary. “Eye hath not 
seen, ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the 
heart of man to conceive” how great is the power of 
Mary with her Divine Son. 


The Saints Not Mistaken. 


When I was a student of theology I used to wonder 
at some of the apparently extravagant assertions of 
St. Alphonsus Liguori and of other saints when treat¬ 
ing of the Blessed Virgin. I have since learned, how¬ 
ever, in the great school of a sinful world that the 
goodness and power of Mary is as wondrous and as 
extraordinary as it was in the days of the saints, and 
that nothing is too extravagant to be said of her when 
it is a question of her interest and compassion for a 
soul that is in danger of being eternally lost. 

And O what comfort in all this for the sinner! Let 
no one despair of salvation so long as the great Mother 
of the Crucified stands ready and eager to plead our 
cause and to obtain for us the grace of repentance. 

An old priest once told me of a curate he had who 
was always finding fault with what he called supersti¬ 
tious devotion to Mary. He wished to be very exact 
theologically in all his sermons, and never gave her 
a word of praise which even the most unfriendly critic 
could say did not rightfully belong to her. He was 
always afraid of scandalizing some Protestant who 



22 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


might by accident be present in the audience. “I 
always felt,” said the old man, “that the young man 
would not persevere, and he did not. There was a 
radical defect in his spiritual make-up, and that was 
the very point on which he, as a priest and a theologian, 
ought to have been the strongest.” 


The Test of Orthodoxy. 


I read with considerable interest on one occasion 
the writings of a Bishop who had attained a consider¬ 
able degree of eminence in his day and age. Those 
writings were largley of a philosophical character, and 
contained much that was admirable and commendable. 
Their perusal, however, left somehow a bad taste in 
was. There were many evidences of a deep faith in 
the power of the Church to enlighten and sanctify the 
world. There was much, too, that might have been 
appropriately written by a pagan philosopher. There 
was a something, however, about them which left a 
bad taste in the mouth. I tried to discover for a long 
time, why such was the case and finally arrived at a 
satisfactory solution of my difficulty. In the whole 
range of his writings there were scarcely a dozen half¬ 
hearted references to Mary’s power. I was not sur¬ 
prised to discover later on that these very books had 
brought him under suspicion in Rome, and that be¬ 
cause of them he had been shut out from what seemed 
to be a well-deserved promotion. Rome, the mother 
of all the churches, has ever been suspicious of the 
orthodoxy of those in whose writings and teachings 
Mary had been relegated to the background. 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


23 


Much to Learn. 


A priest who visited the city of Mitlan, in the 
southern part of Mexico, during the past year, tells of 
a beautiful custom which prevails there. The train 
which bore the priest and his fellow-passengers pulled 
into the city just as the first rays of the rising sun broke 
through the eastern horizon. What was their surprise 
to find the whole city singing a hymn of praise to 
Mary. In the olden days there had stood in the place 
a famous temple to the sun. The good padres who 
made the people Christians had evidently transformed 
an old pagan custom and made it an occassion of en¬ 
gendering devotion to Mary. The priest further re¬ 
lates that the whole party, Protestants included, were 
exceedingly edified, and pronounced this pious custom 
one of the most beautiful they had ever witnessed. 

We have much to learn from the Catholic inhabi¬ 
tants of other lands. We are, I fear, in matters of de¬ 
votion to Mary, the least devout of all Catholic 
peoples. Nowhere are her feasts less honored, her 
altars more neglected. The fear of offending the 
sensibilities of non-Catholics pervades all our public 
utterances. There is too much of the apologetic tone 
’in all that concerns her honor. We are afraid to treat 
openly of her apparitions, or of those wondrous 
prodigies of Mary’s power, for fear that some one who 
differs from us in religion will laugh at us or think us 
superstitious. We seem to forget that in this matter 
the Lord has chosen the weak things of the world that 
He might confound the strong and the foolish, that 



24 


‘THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


He might confound the wise. The Catholic Church 
teaches, and teaches authoritatively, that, in the Provi¬ 
dence of God, true devotion to Mary is frequently 
the secret of Christian perseverance. It holds up 
constantly before the sinner’s eyes the sure promise 
of pardon and reconciliation if he will but turn to God 
through Mary, the Mother of God and refuge of 
sinners. 


CHAPTER V. 

The Great Barrier. 

(Against Iniquity.) 


A Cure for Doubt. 


A young man came to me one day and said, “Father, 
I want to speak to you about some doubts which I 
have on matters pertaining to the Church.” I said to 
him, “How long is it since you have been to con¬ 
fession ?” “About three years,” he replied; “but I 
have not been situated so that I could go when I wanted 
to. I have lived for more than two years of that time 
in a place where there was no church, so you see there 
is a reason for my not having gone.” “When did you 
begin to have these doubts?” I asked again. “I have 
been having them for quite a while,” he answered, 
“and as I associate with men who scarcely believe in 
anything, I am anxious to have them solved; first, for 
my own satisfaction and secondly, so that I can defend 
our doctrine when it is attacked.” 



“THE OUGHT TO BE)’S” 


25 


“All right,” i said; “but first I want you to do one 
thing. Go out there to the church and get ready for 
confession. When you have done that, come to me and 
I will solve every doubt. If you are unwilling to do 
this, I have good reason to believe that the time spent 
on you will be time spent in vain.” 

When that young man had finished his confession 
every doubt had disappeared. He was the simple, 
humble, earnest Catholic once again. Faith had re¬ 
sumed its sway. His own heart and conscience bore 
testimony to the truth of those things which made for 
righteousness and inward peace. 

What is true of this young man is true of nearly all 
those who have grown indifferent. One good, honest 
earnest confession will dispel all the clouds of error 
that bedim the intellect and obscure the light of faith. 
Religious indifference is a spiritual disease. Its root 
is mortal sin. Its remedy is the great sacrament, 
which attacks sin in its stronghold and eradicates it, 
root and branch. That sacrament is confession, or 
penance. 


Something Wrong. 


Alien Catholics give up confession, the beginning 
of the end has come. There is only one reason. They 
will not give up sin. They may call their negligence 
by other names. They may give this and that excuse, 
but deep down in their hearts they know well that there 
is something which God or His Church demands, and 
which they are unwilling to do. 



26 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


I am not treating' here of the ignorant or of the 
badly instructed. It sometimes happens that such 
people do not fulfill their religious obligations for the 
simple reason that they do not know them. There are 
few, however, who do not know what the confessional 
means. It has been the “stone of destiny/’ the dogma 
around which controversy has waged for more than 
three hundred years. The sects have reviled it, but 
they have never misunderstood it. They have always 
known that it stands for a wonderful power claimed 
by priests—God’s own power of absolving from sin. 
So well is this power understood amongst Catholics 
that it is almost the first lesson which a child learns. 
It is a matter in which ignorance is almost incon¬ 
ceivable. When it is avoided it is because the first and 
principal condition upon which it insists is a change 
of heart and a change of life. 

I know well that there are some fallen-away Catho¬ 
lics who will resent the imputation that they are 
leading sinful lives. Let us tear off the mask. There 
is,undoubtedly, something wrong. The experience of 
the age has proven beyond the peradventure of a 
doubt that good men and women do fall away. If 
they have come to a stage where they do not believe 
there is anything wrong, their case is sad indeed. It 
is a sign that they have already made a creed to fit 
their conduct and that, according to the tenets of that 
new creed, they stand acquitted before the tribunals 
set up in their own consciences. At least that is what 
they make themselves believe. Sometimes an illumi¬ 
nating ray of God’s grace sends a thrill of wild fear 
through the soul’s darkness, and then they do not 


the: ought to be’S” 


27 


feel wholly secure. As a rule, however, such illumina¬ 
tions only serve to add to the account of graces resisted 
and mercies contemptuously cast aside. 


Mercy’s Prodigality. 

If we be lost, God will certainly not be to blame. 
He has done all that He could to save us and leave us 
intelligence and a free will. He might have made us 
automatons or creatures of pure instinct, and fitted us 
to work out a destiny along such lines. He has given 
us brains and understanding and made us free. If we 
have sinned, He only asks that we repent and do 
penance. He has set up a tribunal of mercy in every 
corner of the earth, and given to men like ourselves 
His divine power of forgiveness. He has been so 
prodigal of His mercy that none, not even the vilest of 
sinners, are excluded from its benefits. There are no 
bounds and no limits set to that forgiving power. All 
He asks is that they confess their iniquities and resolve 
to go and sin no more. What could God do that He 
has not done? What answer can we make to Him on 
the last day if we have persistently refused His 
proffered mercy and died impenitent? 


A Human Need. 


The sin and spiritual misery of the world has 
sore need of such an institution as the Catholic con¬ 
fessional. The bruised and broken spirit needs the 
assurance of divine forgiveness. It needs at the same 
time the spoken word of human sympathy. Confes- 





28 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S ! 


sion of sin is as much an instinct of the human heart 
as is the hope of immortality. 

I have often thought that if the confessional were 
only a human institution, it would be of incalculable 
benefit to the world. It teaches men and women to 
examine and see for themselves where they stand with 
God. It teaches, moreover, the importance of cor¬ 
recting the mistakes of the past and the necessity of 
frequently renewing one’s good resolutions. Amend¬ 
ment of life is the keynote of it all. Without this 
confession is a mockery. The bare confession of sin 
may be truly said to be the least important of its 
requisites. There may be a valid confession without 
even so much as a spoken word, as in the case of the 
unconscious. There can never be a valid absolution 
where there is no real sorrow, and real sorrow implies 
ever and always the firm purpose of amendment. 

The great argument for the divine character of the 
confessional is its fruits. It is the greatest power for 
righteousness in the world to-day. No other single 
moral force can be compared with it for an instant. 
Abolish it and a great tide of immorality would sweep 
across the world. It stands for God and His com¬ 
mandments. It stands for everything that is holiest 
and best in life—for all the high ideals of our holy 
faith. It is the great barrier set up by Christ against 
the unrighteousness of the world, the barrier which 
sets the limits and bounds to human passion and pro¬ 
claims to the flood-tide of human iniquity, “Thus far 
shall thou go, and no farther/’ 


‘THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


29 


CHAPTER VI. 

Shifting the Burden. 


An Old Subterfuge. 


A good lady writes from the East to inform me that 
she does not believe that I have yet discovered the true 
secret of the “Ought-to-Be’s.” She intimates very 
plainly that the scandal given by priests is largely to 
blame for such a condition. She takes advantage of 
the opportunity at the same time to criticize my attitude 
toward the erring in some of my articles, and hopes 
that a larger measure of charity will characterize my 
future utterances. 

With regard to the latter charge, I will only say that 
the best I can hope for is that here and there my words 
may help some poor soul who is staggering under 
the load, or one who has already been crushed to the 
earth by its weight. I am well aware that not all, 
perhaps not even half, the readers of the Catholic 
Standard and Times will read these articles. I am 
hopeful, however, that Almighty God may be pleased 
to employ them to infuse new courage into some 
sinking heart, or make them the means of enlightening 
some who sit in the darkness and shadow of death. A 
priest preaches to a larger audience through the press 
than in any other wav, and the duty of preaching the 
Gospel is incumbent upon every priest. 



30 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


Sinners and Sinners. 


With regard to the first charge, I will say that I have 
heard it before, and I have heard it most frequently 
from men and women for whom I have very little re¬ 
spect. There are sinners and sinners:. There are 
those who have manhood enough in them to shoulder 
their own sins, and those who are always striving to 
shift the burden on to some one else’s shoulders. For 
the first I have nothing but sympathy and compassion. 
I am one of them, and their infirmity is mine. For 
the second my feelings are somewhat mixed. There 
is something unmanly and unfair in their attitude. 
They know well, or ought to know, that God will not 
ask them on the day of reckoning what this or that man 
or woman has done, but that he will judge them accord¬ 
ing to their own works. It is more than likely that 
Ananias found an excuse for his conduct in the avarice 
of Judas and the lies of Peter, but these did not save 
him from the wrath of God. 

Yes, I know well that priests ought to be pillars of 
light, and so ought all Christians. There is not one 
gospel for the clergy and another for the laity. They 
are all bound to strive after perfection, and none will 
be excused. More is expected of the priest, but that 
is a reflection upon, rather than a compliment to, the 
lay-man. 

I have always found this class of shifters hard to deal 
with. There is a something wrong in their make-up, a 
defect in the fundamental principles of conduct, a flaw 
in the natural foundation upon which the supernatural 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


31 


structure must be built. It is the old subterfuge of 
Adam in the first great sin of the world, and age and 
custom have not made it respectable or removed from 
it the original taint of cowardice. 

Bad priests and bad ministers of religion are the 
favorite arguments of professional unbelievers the 
world over. It seems to give those people a good 
deal of comfort to know that here and there a minister 
of the Gospel gets down to their own level. They are 
welcome to ail the comfort they or any one else can 
derive from such an argument. 


Misleading Aphorisms. 


There are a good many exploded platitudes handed 
down from the olden days—bogies employed originally 
to scare young people, which in the course of years have 
come to be regarded as accepted truths, and one of 
these is that “priests should lead better lives than the 
people.” All Christians, priests included, should be 
saints, and ordinarily it is easier for a layman to be 
a saint than it is for a priest. The layman has only 
his own soul to answer for, whilst the priest has to 
answer for his own soul as well as for the souls of those 
committed to his care. This doubtful principle has led 
many men and women who ought to know better to 
make the shortcomings of priests and religious an 
excuse for their own personal depravity. 

It is true, nevertheless, that the most difficult ideal in 
the world is that which is held up before the eyes of 
the priest. His ordinary conduct, his daily life fre¬ 
quently calls for the practice of heroic virtue. When 



32 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


he faints and falters by the way, under the heavy cross 
which the Church has laid upon him in making him a 
priest, what does he find? He finds the swine of the 
earth, wallowing in the gutters and in the mire, lifting 
their heads from the slough which surrounds them to 
^runt their contempt and lay the responsibility for 
their condition on his already overburdened shoulders. 
There is pity in plenty for the common sinner, but 
there is no pity for the poor, fallen priest, whose con¬ 
dition is most deserving of pity. He is an Ishmaelite, 
an outcast, and no hand is stretched forth to help and 
comfort him in his hour of need. His fall is merely 
another reason, providentially supplied, why the 
ordinary sinner should not turn from his evil ways to 
serve the Lord, his God. It is only another illustra¬ 
tion of that strange logic which declares that when a 
priest chooses hell for his portion others must follow 
him into the eternal fires. 


An Explanation. 


I do not mean to imply in the foregoing that priests 
are not called upon to strive after holiness and right¬ 
eousness with all their might. Every priest well un¬ 
derstands the holiness of the priestly state and the 
exacting character of its requirements. He has had 
this drummed into his ears ever since he can remember 
anything. He knows he must lead a holy and a blame¬ 
less life in order to do God’s work worthily in the 
world. He realizes, better perhaps than any one else, 
the importance of good example as far as he is con¬ 
cerned, and no one regrets it more than he when he 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


33 


falls short of the true priestly ideal. All this, however, 
has nothing to do with the question in hand. Popes, 
Bishops and priests in the past have fallen from gra^e. 
That will not excuse me for a failure to live up to the 
standard set up by Christ. 

Priests will have to answer personally for their 
imperfections. Every man who has come into the 
world must stand and answer for himself before the 
great judgment seat. By his own deeds shall he earn 
approval or condemnation. 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Sham Fortress. 

The Suicide Club. 


I have often wondered if all who have given up the 
faith be as unhappy as those with whom I have per¬ 
sonally come in contact. I have met many of them, 
and I have never met a happy man or woman amongst 
them. The first sick call I ever had was to a young 
woman who had shot herself whilst lying by the side 
of her husband, who was a divorced man at the time of 
their marriage. The poor girl had evidently not found 
the happiness for which she had sacrificed faith and 
conscience. 

There is in many parts of the United States a 
Bohemian secret society composed chiefly of renegade 
Catholics. The spirit of this society is aggressively 
atheistic and anti-Catholic. Wherever it exists it has 
manifested a characteristic which has attracted general 



34 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


attention. A large percentage of the members die by 
their own hand. It is commonly called “The Bohem¬ 
ian Suicide Club.” 

I have noticed that there is a vast difference be¬ 
tween the fallen-away Catholics of the different nation¬ 
alities. Bohemian perverts are, as a rule, very bitter 
in their antagonism. This is accounted for, largely 
by the fact that infidel newspapers have a wide circu¬ 
lation amongst such people. As a rule the priests 
of this nationality frequently find their tasks a very 
difficult one. The majority of their countrymen are 
faithful and devoted to their religion, but there is an 
active minority, at least in the West, which is animated 
by what appears to be a diabolical spirit. Germans 
and Irish of Catholic extraction always retain a warm 
place in their hearts for the old Church long after they 
have ceased to practice its precepts. 

I remember with much pleasure an experience I 
had some years ago with a small colony of German 
“ought-to-be’s” in Central Nebraska. When I first 
began attending them there appeared to be only about 
a half-dozen families, and these not very devout. In 
the face of many difficulties a little church was built, 
and shortly afterwards a zealous young Dominican 
gave the first mission ever held in the place. The re¬ 
sult far exceeded our expectations. On the last day 
of the mission some twenty men approached Holy 
Communion, and it was publicly known that not one 
of them had been to confession since the day in which 
they had settled in the place, some twenty years before. 
When I turned the little congregation over to its 
newly-appointed pastor, shortly afterwards, the mem- 


THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


35 


bership had increased to forty-nine families. Since 
that time much has been done in a spiritual way 
amongst them. They are loyal and steadfast, and a 
striking proof of the assertion that American “ought- 
to-be’s” furnish the greatest field for missionary 
effort in the whole wide world. 

And this brings me to another point to which I 
believe it is well to frequently call the reader’s at¬ 
tention. It is this: We must never give up the hope 
of converting such people. I make one exception. It 
is that of open apostasy. Outside of such there is 
always a ground for hope so long as a single particle 
of faith remains. These people are not happy in their 
indifference. There is no peace of heart in irreligion, 
and God’s grace sometimes operates in wondrous 
ways. Some of the warmest and best friends I have 
ever had have been fallen-away Catholics. I have 
found many of them generous and ready with their 
aid and sympathy when I stood in need of the same. 
In this respect they frequently put apparently pious 
people to shame. Piety and parsimony sometimes go 
hand in hand. 

Such people come back sooner or later unless they 
are visited with a strange retributive punishment of 
the “ought-to-be’s”—a sudden death. And have you 
ever noticed the prevalence of sudden deaths amongst 
them? It seems to be a punishment for the scandal 
of which their lives have been the occasion and a lesson 
as to the uncertainty of a death-bed repentance. 


36 


THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


The Pulpit of the Future. 


A matter which plays an important part in the 
bringing abont of such conditions is one which we are 
very liable to overlook. It is the absence of Catholic 
literature in Catholic homes. In taking the census 
there is one question which ought never to be omitted. 
That is a question bearing upon the presence or 
absence of Catholic newspapers and periodicals in 
the home. This is a matter of the most primary im¬ 
portance. It affords a sure index as to the quality 
of the faith to be found there. 

We live in an age when literature plays an all- 
important part in the moulding of public and private 
opinion. Bad literature has been and is one of the 
greatest influences for evil in the world. Voltaire 
in his day almost laughed Christianity out of France. 
The defenders of the Church, strong in their fancied 
serin itv, received many of his attacks with contemptu¬ 
ous silence. It was a silence fraught with fateful con¬ 
sequences for religion and civilization. It demon¬ 
strated to a certainty that henceforth the Church in 
every country must use the press as well as the pulpit 
for the dissemination of truth. And here let me state 
what I believe to be a well-established truth, and one 
which is, I fear, too frequently overlooked. The 
place of the pulpit in the dissemination of truth will 
become less and less important as the years go by. 
The press is the great pulpit of the world, and will 
become more and more so as time advances. Through 
it accordingly must the future preacher impart to souls 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


37 


much of the message which has been committed to his 
keeping. 

A Catholic home destitute of Catholic literature in 
this day and age is an anomaly. It is worse. It is a 
fortress of the faith destitute of weapons of defense 
and open on all sides to the attacks of the enemy. 


Unbelief's Propaganda. 


I was sitting in front of a hotel at Denver one 
evening several years ago when my attention and the 
attention of those present was suddenly attracted by 
the noise of shooting in the immediate vicinity. It was 
a saloon brawl, conducted in the typical Western way 
and when it was over a young man lay breathing his 
last. I pushed my way through the curious crowd to 
his side, in the hope that I might be of some service to 
1 a dying man. He was unconscious, with blood pour¬ 
ing from several bullet wounds in his body. I admin¬ 
istered conditional absolution, and in the presence of 
the police, who were already on the grounds, I searched 
his pockets for some marks of identification. In those 
pockets I found some envelopes bearing his name, a 
number of indecent photographs and a lecture of 
Robert Ingersoll’s, entitled “The Mistakes of Moses.” 
That lecture of Ingersoll’s told the whole story. We 
could picture the rest for ourselves. In the wreck of 
that young man’s life could be plainly read drunken¬ 
ness, debauchery and unbelief, the great trinity of the 
generation of young men who look up to Ingersoll as 
their leader and their guide. 



38 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S’ 


I do not believe that we Catholic people fully realize 
the widespread apostolate of agnostic and atheistic 
literature. Ingersoll’s works are as popular to-day as 
they were in the heyday of that great agnostic’s fame. 
His specious reasonings and highsounding platitudes 
constitute the watchwords of thousands of our coun¬ 
trymen, who have turned from counterfeit Christianity 
to the more seductive doctrines of materialism and 
modern paganism. The result is only another proof 
of the evil influence of bad literature. The apostles 
of unbelief have labored whilst the sentinels on the 
watch towers of truth have slept. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Ingersoll’s Straw God. 


The Apostle of a Liberal Creed. 


Ingersoll has been for many years the great high 
priest of what is known as “the big church of America.” 
The big church comprises a great many classes and con¬ 
ditions of religious belief. It stands for the broadest 
liberality in matters of faith and practice. It bars 
no one. In it every man is free to believe as he 
pleases, and refusal to believe the tenets of any or of 
all creeds entails no taint of heresy. The attitude of 
its members towards religion in general cannot be said 
to be an unkindly one. It is one of pity rather than 
one of blame—pity for people who in this day and age 
accept dogmas and doctrines and principles of conduct 
in lieu of empty platitudes and glittering generalities, 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 1 


39 


and a latitude in matters of morals which brooks no re¬ 
strictions save such as are imposed upon all men alike 
by the laws and ordinances of the States and communi¬ 
ties in which they live. 

In the big church every man is his own Pope, and 
personal infallibility is the rule rather than the excep¬ 
tion. Prayer has no place in this new dispensation. 
Its God is an impotent and indifferent being, whose 
attitude toward man is well expressed by Omar 
Khayam: 

And that inverted bowl we call the sky. 

Where under crawling, cooped, we live and die, 
Look not to it for help, for it, 

As impotently moves as you and I. 

Here examination of conscience is a lost art. With 
the dread of a future judgment eliminated, there is no 
need that men should judge themselves. Evil passions 
are merely nature’s laws, and vice and crime the ab¬ 
normal outgrowth of the race’s evolution from primi¬ 
tive savagery to that more or less indefinite stage of 
perfection which will come to pass when all the creeds 
of the world shall have been set aside and reason 
alone shall reign supreme. 


Somewhat Skeptical. 


This is, in substance, the Ingersollian creed, and 
insomuch as it represents the final stage of many 
“ought-to-be’s,” it is a subject deserving of serious 
treatment. Of it I think it can be truly said that it is 
not to-day, and never has been, the creed of the best 
and noblest amongst the children of men. It is not 



40 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


the creed of the pure of heart, the simple and the up¬ 
right of life. The age, thank God, still retains an 
old-fashioned regard for men and women of con¬ 
science. It persists in looking for the truly great of 
the world amongst those who humbly “sacrifice” their 
reason on the altar of faith. We seldom or ever hear 
of those pseudo-apostles being held up to the admira¬ 
tion and imitation of posterity. When men speak of 
them, it is to point a moral rather than to offer them 
as examples for the imitation of others. Ingersoll was 
one of the greatest and best of them, but I do not 
believe that his admirers and disciples will ever demand 
that his name be placed in the Hall of Fame. He 
trucked his doctrines in the market for wealth and 
power, but we seek in vain in his life for that steadfast 
devotion to the cause of truth and practical benevolence 
towards his fellow-men, which, in a world which 
looks for deeds, not words, will ever be the test of 
human greatness. 

The Church is not a ghoul that fastens itself upon 
the dead bodies of its enemies to wreak upon their cold 
and pulseless clay a futile and ignoble vengeance. It 
grieves rather that a brilliant intellect, such as Inger¬ 
soll was, should have been so unworthily employed. It 
is to it a source of deep regret that a soul which God 
has created for His love and for His glory should have 
read in the heavens that man’s existence is an insoluble 
mystery; that his life has no higher purpose than the 
inorganic matter by which it is surrounded, and that 
all the beauty and harmony of God’s creation is for 
him meaningless and purposeless and vain and void. 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


41 


Their Straw God. 


The chief trouble with all the unbelievers with whom 
I have come in personal contact, or those whose works 
I have read, is this: they give Almighty God credit for 
having less sense and less understanding' than they 
themselves possess. They are all the same. The God 
which they attack is a straw God, which they build up 
and demolish with the utmost ease. The God against 
which Ingersoll raged and stormed for years is nothing 
more or less than an imaginary eternal infinite fiend, 
reveling in murder, blood, rapine and plunder, and find¬ 
ing a species of diabolical delight in the miseries and 
sufferings of the creatures which he is supposed to 
have created. He is the God of the cruel, the foolish, 
the ignorant, the murderous, the malignant, the cor¬ 
rupt, the avaricious, the heartless, the rapacious and the 
bloodthirsty ot every age. In short, he is a monster 
of a most frightful mien, who has created man in order 
that his existence might be a curse rather than a bless¬ 
ing to creation. Jesus, the gentle Saviour, is a charla¬ 
tan of the first magnitude. His deluded followers 
have deluged the world with blood in order that they 
might demonstrate His rightful claims to His great 
title, “the Prince of Peace. ’ ’ Whatever is praiseworthy 
in Ilis doctrines has been stolen from the great minds 
of oaean antiquity. The balance has merely served to 
make foolish martyrs and incorrigible bigots and helped 
to impede rather than hasten the onward march of 
human progress. 



42 


THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


The Fatal Test. 


The chief difficulty which the unbeliever encounters 
is this: Christianity has demonstrated its ability to 
effect something in the world; infidelity has effected 
nothing. The nations which have accepted Christianity, 
are inmeasurably in advance of those in which un¬ 
belief obtains full sway. Infidelity of the Simon-pure, 
unadulterated brand, such as we find it amongst our 
advanced American thinkers, has demonstrated its 
capacity to effect—nothing. It has been at work for 
almost two thousand years, and all “the brave few,” 
from Julian the Apostate down to Ingersoll, have not 
succeeded in regenerating even so much as one little 
tribe; aye, despite all its pretensions to philanthropy, 
benevolence and brotherly love, it has not, up to the 
present, succeeded in founding even so much as one 
little orphan asylum. Infidelity’s proudest claim is to 
words, not deeds. It has been and is to-day, as far as 
human advancement is concerned, absolutely barren of 
visible results. 

A free Gospel never yet had a place in unbelief’s 
propaganda. Ingersoll’s gospel of brotherly love was 
ever hedged round with big admission fees and ex¬ 
cessive royalties. He clothed the ancient fables of 
Julian and Celsus in a new and wondrous phraseology, 
and leveled the barbed shafts of ridicule at the weak 
spots of the Christian armor. But he was ever and 
always the preacher of a creed for revenue only, and 
the founder of a school whose chief claim to distinc¬ 
tion is a confessed inability to live up to the high 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


43 


standard of Christian morals. As such he well de¬ 
serves to occupy the first place in the affections of the 
“ought-to-be’s” of every creed. 

CHAPTER IX. 

In the Name of Learning. 

Intellectual Strays. 


A missionary priest of wide experience has asked 
me to touch upon a class of fallen-away Catholics who 
are a thorn in the side of the Church wherever they are 
found. He refers to those “intellectual strays” whose 
researches in the domain of science have led them to 
reject Christianity and, with Christianity, all that it 
stands for in doctrine and morals. 

Those people are a very difficult class to deal with. 
As a rule they are proud, self-opinionated and much 
given to controversy. Their wisdom is so self-evident 
that it is impossible to escape it. They are liberal as 
yet, of course, and are quite willing that the Church 
should remain in this country, at least until such time 
as advanced thinkers shall decree that every form of 
superstition be banished from the land. They pity, 
rather than blame, the poor, deluded followers of re¬ 
ligion, and particularly their former brethren, who are 
in a special manner deserving of commiseration. With 
the priests they have less patience. Men of education, 
such as they are, ought to know better. They keep the 
ignorant masses in spiritual bondage, and in this wav 
are the greatest foes of liberty and light. 



44 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


The medical profession has supplied many of the 
members of this class. Medicine, the most inexact of 
all the sciences, seems particularly averse to Christian 
teaching. The soul, the vital principle, is not dis¬ 
cernible under the microscope, and successfully eludes 
the dissecting knife; hence it follows, as a natural con¬ 
sequence, that it does not exist. The doctors have not 
yet succeeded in fathoming half the mysteries of mind 
and matter of life and death, but the mystery of an im¬ 
mortal soul is rejected at the very outset as entirely 
unworthy of the consideration of raw students and 
amateur scientists. 


One of Many. 

There was, in one of my former missions, a young 
doctor who helped to bring this matter to my immediate 
attention. He was the son of worthy Catholic parents, 
and a good education for their boy was the dominant 
idea of their lives for many years. They sent him to a 
Catholic college, and when he had graduated there¬ 
from they determined to make him a doctor. Although 
there was almost at his door an excellent medical 
college conducted under the auspices of the Jesuits, it 
was not good enough for a young man of so many 
brilliant parts. Nothing would do but that he must 
hie himself to the far East and enter a “non-sectarian” 
institution to fit himself for his chosen profession. 

He had been an exemplary boy up to that time, 
and like his parents, I had looked forward with many 
hopes to the hour when he would complete his course 
and take up the practice of medicine amongst us. 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


45 


Good Catholic doctors are rare, and I had always been 
desirous of having one of the right kind in the parish. 
Imagine my surprise upon finding that the young man 
upon whom we had all built so many hopes came forth 
from the Eastern institution an agnostic of the most 
pronounced type. And his history is the story of 
hundreds of our young men who have entered what 
are sometimes incorrectly named “the learned pro¬ 
fessions.” Unbelieving professors and profligate as¬ 
sociates have done the work. The thin veneer of so- 
called learning has been made a pretext for rejecting 
the science of sciences, the knowledge of God. 

The Church has always feared ignorance. It has 
feared more, if possible, that half-learning in which 
intellectual pride so easily takes root. It challenges 
the whole range of science to produce a single demon¬ 
strated fact at variance with Catholic truth. It points 
to numberless scientific conclusions which religion has 
demonstrated to be false and fraudulent. It has pro¬ 
claimed time and again that there is no war between 
science and faith—that faith is the handmaid and 
guide of right reason, and that without faith as a guide 
reason is liable to encounter a thousand hidden pit- 
falls. The man, who in this day and age, proclaims 
that learning is incompatible with faith demostrates 
clearly that he himself is destitute of real learning, 
that the science of which he boasts is of the counterfeit 
variety. 

We have seen many of those learned perverts in our 
day, and we have never seen one of them whose stand¬ 
ing in the community was to be envied. At bottom 
their difficulty is one of morals rather than of dogma, 


46 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


and the public is not slow to recognize this fact. Their 
learning, like their system of morals, is sooner or later 
discovered to be a sham. The humblest Catholic in 
any community has been found by experience to be 
more worthy of the honor and esteem of his fellow- 
men than the whole generation of unbelievers, learned 
and otherwise, despite their boastful assumption of 
superiority and their freedom from the trammels of 
faith and conscience. 


The Verdict of the Ages. 


The true scientist ought to be the humblest of men. 
There are so many things in creation of which he is 
and must remain ignorant. The more he knows the 
more truly must he realize how much there is still to 
learn. He ought to be the last man in the world to 
attack the science which unfolds the relations between 
the knowable and the unknown, between man and 
God, between the creature and the Creator. His un¬ 
belief is nothing more nor less than the weakness and 
blindness of human pride. A little handful of brains 
sits in judgment on the infinite, and because he cannot 
comprehend infinitude he must, perforce, reject it. He 
looks down into his own soul, and because he cannot 
see and taste and touch and handle that spiritual and 
immaterial element, he denies its immortality, aye, 
even, when every fibre of his being, when every instinct 
of his heart registers its protest against such a denial. 

Unbelief is the most unscientific of all the creeds. 
The ages have rejected it as inhuman and impossible. 
The existence of a Creator, the immortality of the soul, 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


47 


the rewards and punishments which wait upon men’s 
deeds—these are great truths to which the world has 
clung from the beginning. It will be found clinging 
to them long after science has climbed the topmost 
peaks and discovered all those things which lie within 
the reach of human ken. 

CHAPTER X. 

The Money Question. 

Always Acute. 


A friend writes from a large Eastern city: “I know 
of a couple of converts in this parish who have given 
up the faith largely because they heard nothing in the 
Church but money, money and everlastingly money.” 

The money question will always be an acute one, 
so long as the support of religion depends upon the 
voluntary contributions of the people. It cannot well 
help being so. I do not believe, however, that it is an 
acute question for the right kind of Catholics. It is 
the wrong kind—those who wish to escape the finan¬ 
cial obligations imposed upon them—who make it so. 
I am well aware that this is a matter in which many 
people are easily scandalized. I am willing to con¬ 
cede, too, that in some instances this “talking money” 
from the pulpit has been somewhat overdone. It is 
patent, however, to the most limited intelligence that a 
certain amount of it is absolutely necessary, and no 
priest directly engaged in parish work can well es¬ 
cape it. 



48 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


When I was a student of theology there was one 
subject which I was never permitted to forget. That 
was the great injury to religion this money question 
was causing, and the necessity of prudence and self- 
sacrifice in dealing with it. Our professors of theology 
were all theorists, and none of them had been brought 
into actual contact with the practical workings of a 
parish. They proceeded on two assumptions, both of 
which I have since discovered to be unfounded. One 
was that priests were too prone to harp upon money 
matters to the exclusion of other and more important 
subjects, and the other was that the great majority of 
the faithful are willing to do their full duty in matters 
bearing upon the financial well-being of the parish. I 
have found the real facts in the case to be almost the 
reverse. I have found a large percentage of our people 
to be ready and willing to enjoy the benefits of re¬ 
ligion without making the pecuniary sacrifices which 
religion inevitably entails; and I have found at the 
same time that priests as a class abhor the duty which 
is forced upon them of treating money matters from 
the pulpit. I think, too, that it can be truly said that 
no class of men in the whole world care as little for 
money as do American priests. I have often thought 
that many of them, because of this indifference, are 
too easily imposed upon. The majority of them, to my 
certain knowledge, are positively poor. The salary 
paid them in the different dioceses of the country is 
not calculated to aid in piling up riches. In the 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


49 


smaller parishes it is frequently not sufficient for their 
ordinary needs, but priestly pride and a reluctance to 
talk money prevent them from making their wants 
known. If the average priest knew beforehand the 
humiliations he would be forced to undergo in matters 
pertaining to this ever acute money question, I venture 
to assert that the Church of God would be sadly in 
need of ministers. 


Cheap Christianity. 


The older a priest grows the less patience he has 
with that class of Catholics kpown in the common par¬ 
lance of the country as bad pays, or by the more sig¬ 
nificant and more opprobious title “dead beats.” They 
are, as a rule, the most censorious and the most exact¬ 
ing. They are the first to insist that everything in con¬ 
nection with the church be kept in the best possible 
shape; that it be well lighted, heated and ventilated, 
and that it be an eminently re'spectable place of wor¬ 
ship. They insist, at the same time, that a priest be a 
gentleman, a scholar and a saint, and especially the 
latter, for saints have acquired a reputation for living 
on meagre annual allowances. It is this more or less 
intangible element known as “gall” which confronts 
the priest at every step in his dealings with this com¬ 
mon brand of cheap Christianity, and which makes 
him lose patience and occasionally give public utter¬ 
ance to unpalatable truths. 



50 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


All that the Church asks and expects is that people 
contribute according to their means; no more, no less. 
Yet if it ever becomes a question between the soul of a 
penurious person and his money, she solemnly adjures 
him to keep his money and save his soul, i. e., if such a 
soul can be saved, which is, to say the least, very 
doubtful. 


No Place for Avarice. 


I do not wish to be understood as condoning abuses 
and apologizing for pious grafts or pious grafters. So 
long as priests are clothed with human frailty, so 
long will abuses exist amongst them. If eleven out of 
every twelve b^ faithful, they will be doing as well as 
the apostles did and a great deal better than the aver¬ 
age run of Christians. Amongst priests themselves 
there is a deep and traditional contempt for the priest 
in whose soul the vice of avarice has taken root. It 
savors too much of the treason of the faithless apostle, 
and is wholly incompatible with the high ideals of the 
clerical state. Cardinal Manning says somewhere that 
a priest’s will without charity is the saddest testimony 
as to the character of his life. A priest without charity 
and consideration for the poor is an anomaly. Thanks 
be to God he is so rare that the species may be said to 
be practically extinct. 

It is not the poor, however, who are the bad pays. It 
is the well-to-do, and sometimes the wealthy. The 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S’ 


51 


poor have always done their share and more than 
their share in this country. It is to them that much 
of the credit must be given for the material progress 
which the Church has made. 

Once on a time the Anglicans of Dublin assembled 
to formulate plans for the erection of a great national 
cathedral, and after many plans had been proposed 
and rejected, chiefly because those present were un¬ 
willing to go down deep enough into their own 
pockets, Dean Swift arose and, with a fine sarcasm, 
suggested that they let the Papists build it with their 
pennies and then confiscate it. The great dean merely 
gave expression to a striking historical truth. In the 
past, as in the present, it is the pennies of the poor 
rather than the pounds of the rich upon which the 
Church has had to rely. 

The priest’s solicitude in financial matters is gen¬ 
erally not for himself. It is for the Church with 
which he has been entrusted. Its interests are his in¬ 
terests; its failure will, many times unjustly, be laid 
upon his shoulders. His standing in the eyes of his 
Bishop and fellow-priests is frequently affected by the 
financial standing of his parish, and while his whole 
nature may revolt against the unpleasant duty of forc¬ 
ing his people to recognize the most elementary busi¬ 
ness principles in their Church relations, his duty to 
God and to himself urges him to this unpleasant task. 


52 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


CHAPTER XI. 

A Hackneyed Subject. 

The Devil’s Favorite Lure. 

John Boyle O'Reilly has written an instructive little 
poem, which runs as follows: 

“What bait do you use,” said a saint to the Devil. 

“When you fish where the souls of men abound?” 
“Well, for special cases,” said the King of Evil, 

“Gold and fame are the best I’ve found.” 

“But for common use?” quoth the saint. 

“Ah, then,” said the Demon, “I fish for man, not men, 
“And a thing I hate 
“Is to change my bait, 

“So I fish with a woman the whole year round.” 

The man or the woman has ever been a most effective 
lure of the Evil One in drawing souls away from 
virtue. The Church has always discouraged what is 
known as “mixed marriages.” It has had the very 
best of reasons. They have drawn more souls away 
from God than they have ever drawn towards Him. 
There are those who hold that if it were not for mixed 
marriages America would be to-day more than half 
Catholic. I do not know how much probability there 
is in that hypothesis, but I think I am correct in stating 
that such unions have done an irreparable amount of 
harm to religion in every State in the Union. 

This has been brought to my mind in a particular 
manner during a mission which has just closed in the 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


53 


church of which I have charge. At the close of that 
mission I made a partial census of the men and women 
who had not approached the sacraments. The neg¬ 
lect in almost every case could be traced to one cause— 
a mixed marriage. And what is true of this parish is 
true of every parish in the land. You will find the 
great bulk of the ought-to-be’s amongst those who 
have married a non-Catholic husband or wife. 

O, yes, there are good men and women who have 
contracted mixed marriages. It is not of these I am 
treating. It is the bad ones—those who have per¬ 
mitted themselves to grow cold and careless in the 
service of the Lord, who have, to all intents and pur¬ 
poses, given up the faith as one of the conditions of 
domestic peace. 

I do not think it necessary to enumerate here the 
broad principles which lie at the root of the Church’s 
disapproval of such marriages. Its present attitude is 
the result of bitter experience. Young men and women 
when under the influence of the tender passion will 
make all kinds of promises. The majority of those 
promises are never kept. Priests and Bishops are ac¬ 
cused of intolerance and a lack of liberality because 
they are so strict in this matter. The real truth of the 
case is that they have not been strict enough. 


The Principle at Stake. 


After almost twenty centuries of chastening ex¬ 
perience, the Church stands out boldly and squarely 
in its opposition to mixed marriages. It has found 
that it is impossible or nearly so for two people whose 



54 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S ! 


moral standards are totally at variance to dwell to¬ 
gether in peace. And this is as true today as it was in 
the days of Nero and Vespasion. Married life has 
problems enough of its own without adding the dis¬ 
sensions arising from different religious beliefs. There 
are higher considerations, however, than the familv 
peace. Such unions have been the frequent source of 
apostasy and irreligion. The children are brought up 
non-Catholics or without any religion. They are un¬ 
desirable from the moral point of view. A Catholic 
wife linked to a Protestant or unbelieving husband 
has, as such wives too well know, abundant oppor¬ 
tunity to sacrifice Catholic principles of conduct. She 
cannot be true to her religious convictions and at the 
same time be the ideal wife of a husband, who sneers 
at many things which she holds sacred. It was a mis¬ 
take and frequently worse than a mistake a generation 
ago. With the commonly accepted views on the ques¬ 
tion of maternity which are everywhere prevalent 
amongst non-Catholics it is today a moral calamity. 
This is a hard saying but it is the simple truth. Catho¬ 
lic and non-Catholic morality on matters affecting the 
marriage relations are as opposite as the poles. There 
is little prospect for happiness in a union, in which the 
Catholic party is exposed to the danger of living in a 
chronic state of mortal sin. 


An Old Theme. 


The problem of marriage and divorce has now 
reached the critical stage in this country. Were it not 
for the uncompromising attitude of the Catholic 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


55 


Church, a floodtide of iniquity would sweep over the 
land, carrying everything before it. 

“This is a hackneyed subject,” I hear some one say. 
Yes, it is an old theme; but it is a theme of which a 
priest may well treat on bended knees and with a 
prayerful heart, for it is brought home to him every 
day in a hundred different ways. He finds the mar¬ 
riage problem to be as acute today in every parish as it 
was in the davs when God sent His destroying waters 
upon the earth because “the sons of God went into 
the daughters of men and brought forth children.” 

Ingersoll in several of his lectures makes the 
wholesale destruction of the Madianites, as narrated 
in the thirty-first chapter of the Book of Numbers, a 
strong argument in support of his contention as to the 
cruelty of Jehovah. It is one of the strongest argu¬ 
ments against the Christian’s God to be found in the 
whole range of this great unbeliever’s writings. On 
the face of it, the occurrence, as narrated by the in¬ 
spired author of the Pentateuch, is nothing more or 
less than a wanton massacre of defenseless women and 
innocent children. Herodotus, a Pagan himself, has 
supplied us with the best solution of Ingersoll’s objec¬ 
tion. He was the greatest traveler of pre-Christian 
times, and he has left us an interesting account of the 
manners and morals of the gentile races with whom he 
came in contact. One thing stands clearly out in his 
narrative, and that is the unspeakable depravity of all 
those Pagan peoples. It is almost incredible that 
human beings could have sunk so low in the moral 
scale. There is little wonder, therefore, that Moses 
should have commanded his followers to wipe the 


56 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


corrupt Madianites off the face of the earth. Their 
wanton women had led the chosen people into sin by 
enticing them to take part in the impure ceremonies 
of their idolatrous worship, and Moses, by the com¬ 
mand of God, determined to root out the evil by de¬ 
stroying a people who were unfit to live and perpetuate 
the human species. That thirty-first chapter of the 
Book of Numbers is the greatest sermon on mixed 
marriages ever written. It is an evidence that the 
great law-giver recognized the danger of union be¬ 
tween the believer and the unbeliever, and took a most 
effective means of preventing the same. 


The Nation’s Menace. 


We have always had those amongst our own people 
who are wiser than the Church itself. To them the 
Church’s legislation is antiquated and out of date. 
It will not permit people to marry whom they will and 
when they will. In other words it is merely striving 
to save them from the consequences of their own lack 
of wisdom and experience. 

We live in an age when laxity of views on matters 
pertaining to marriage has become the nation’s menace. 
Divorce is becoming more and more brazen. It has 
pushed itself into the Protestant pew and pulpit de¬ 
spite the protestations of the best men and women in 
all the denominations. It has come to a stage, when 
it claims equality with lawful wedlock. Is it to be 
wondered at that in such conditions, the Church should 
strive by every means in its power to impress upon its 
people the sanctity and holiness of the married state 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


57 


and should at the same time point out to the young 
and inexperienced the dangers from hasty and ill-con¬ 
sidered unions. Marry in haste and repent at leisure 
is an axiom as old as the race. The Church has 
found the solution of the marriage problem excep¬ 
tionally difficult in every age, and every country. In 
a country where divorce is so fearfully prevalent and 
where there is so little regard for the solemn obliga¬ 
tions and duties of the married state, mixed marriages 
are to say the least extremely undesirable. The fewer 
we have of them the better for the cause of religion 
in the years to come. 

CHAPTER XII. 

The American Girl. 


A RisKy Proceeding. 


it is generally considered a pretty hazardous under¬ 
taking for bishops and priests to lay down rules and 
regulations for the “American girl.” In doing so 
they are, to say the least, treading on dangerous ground. 
Her pluck and independence are proverbial. She is 
the incarnation of all those qualities of which poets 
have sung and to utter one word in disparagement of 
her charms or to attempt to thwart her in the exercise 
of her heaven-given rights is treason of the rankest 
kind. She is a queen in her own realm and there is 
no one to dispute her title. Have not our orators, our 
editors, our public speakers and our statesmen lauded 
her to the skies and set her up in a position all bv 



58 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


herself? It behooves us, therefore, to proceed very 
cautiously when it is a question of setting limits or 
bounds to her freedom of action. 

When she falls in love, nowadays, parents are ex¬ 
pected to acquiesce in her choice as a matter of course* 
It really matters but little as far as ultimate results are 
concerned. It is simply a question of good taste on 
the part of the parents themselves. The priest, of 
course, may as well throw up his hands and prepare to 
perform the ceremony. What does it avail to cross 
or thwart her when she will go and get married any¬ 
way? This is a free country; she is an American 
girl and in a position to assert her pluck and independ¬ 
ence. 

She has made her mistakes—who hasn’t? She has 
figured in the divorce courts, but who will say that it 
was wholly her fault. What if there have been some 
265,000 divorces in the last ten years? Think of the 
number of happy marriages which have been con¬ 
tracted. What if over a quarter a million of wayward 
maidens are to be found in the dives and brothels of 
our metropolitan cities? This is but a small price to 
pay for her freedom from antiquated restrictions. 
What if her enemies do assert that her boasted freedom 
has been purchased at the price of a tarnished repu¬ 
tation? Was she not born to refute the old idea that 
maidenhood was to be tenderly cared for and guarded. 
Is it not her privilege to prove to the world that a 
girl can take care of herself, that she has no need of the 
guidance of parents or preceptors, that all those old- 
fogey ideas of the Church about love and marriage 
need remodeling, and that she is qualified to work out 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S ! 


59 


her own destiny without aid or assistance from any 
source. 

And so let us be glad and joyful that we have lived 
to see the American girl. Let the poet sing not as of 
old, of those gentle maidens who were coy and modest 
and bashful and retiring but of the modern sort who 
stand out in the limelight inviting all beholders to see 
and examine for themselves how vast the difference 
between this production of our later civilization and the 
old type, who needed the guidance of chaperons and 
parents and guardians and the restraining influence of 
religion to preserve the love and respect of a genera¬ 
tion, who had no idea of the convenience of the 
divorce court. 


An Explanation. 


Generalities, however, are misleading and it is unjust 
to condemn all our girls for the shortcomings of the 
few. Nations like individuals have their predominant 
failings and it s unfortunately too true that a large 
proportion of our matrimonial misfits can be attributed 
to a lack of salutary restraints and to a departure 
from the ancient standards. The Church blesses the 
marriage state and approves of young people marrying 
under proper conditions. It rejoices in the knowledge 
that there are few divorces amongst Catholic people, 
and that marital happiness is the rule rather than the 
exception amongst its members. It deplores and 
deprecates that undue haste in a matter of such vital 
importance and warns the American girl that there 
is a fate much more appalling than that of becoming 



60 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


an old maid. It is the fate awaiting her who enters 
into a life contract in defiance to the laws of the 
Church. There is very little real happiness in the 
world even when placed in the most favorable sur¬ 
roundings. The woman’s heart from which God has 
been cast out is empty, indeed. No human love can 
fill the void which the absence of God’s grace has 
created. Woman is naturally weak, but irreligious 
or impious—never! 

CHAPTER XIII. 

And This is Fate. 


No Chance to Talk Back. 


I have sometimes felt that the Catholic young 
woman is hardly ever given a chance to talk back. She 
is the recipient of a great deal of wholesome advice, 
and is made to feel in many ways that her chief duty 
is to listen and learn. She herself is seldom consulted 
when theories concerning her welfare are propounded, 
and she must naturally resent the attitude of those who 
have nothing but advice to give. She cannot help 
feeling that she has a destiny to work out in the 
world, and that she is handicapped by the bare fact 
that the working out of that destiny is largely de¬ 
pendent upon the whims and fancies of the male per¬ 
suasion. She has to be sought after rather than to seek. 
She cannot think of being married until she is asked. 
It is not permitted to her even to make the first ad¬ 
vances along sentimental lines, for fear of shocking 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


61 


the sensibilities of the superior creature who is to be her 
liege lord and future master. She is expected to be 
demure and coy, and retiring and bashful, and meek 
and modest and all that, but if she be passed by in the 
matrimonial scramble she finds herself designated with 
the opprobrious epithet of “old maid,” and all because 
she is not supposed to have any rights save those which 
come to her through the grace and favor of the opposite 
sex. She is expected to marry a Catholic young man, 
of course, and she would much prefer to do so, “all 
things else being equal.” 


Not Always Her Fault. 


It is this last clause of the contract, however, which 
is the source of much difficulty. The desirable Catholic 
young man is not so plentiful as he might be, and where 
he is plentiful he is not always persuasive. Sometimes 
he is not as conscientious as his Catholic sister, and 
lavishes his attentions upon young women without the 
fold. When he is conscientious, he is frequently 
lacking in pride and ambition, and feels that he is not 
good enough for the young lady who has received 
nearly all of the family accomplishments. In this he 
is often mistaken. She is proud and independent, but 
she has sense enough to recognize true manhood when 
she finds it, whether it be in the garb of the artisan 
or under the more polished exterior of the banker’s 
clerk. Through no fault of hers she is sometimes face 
to face with the proposition of a “mixed marriage” 
or no marriage at all. It may be that no marriage 
would be the best solution of her difficulty, but the 



62 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


tendrils of the human heart reach out mysteriously, 
and life and love and happiness are all wonderfully 
wrapped up in this old marriage problem. Law-givers 
may legislate, and preachers may preach, and theo¬ 
logians may point out the rough and narrow way that 
leads to perfection, but the poet who sings of love 
will be listened to long after preacher and teacher and 
law-giver have been forgotten. And yet, by a strange 
anomaly of fate, love itself, the very well-spring and 
source of human happiness, unless consecrated by 
faith and founded upon religious motives, is destructive 
of the very happiness which, like some guilded Quivera, 
is ever to be found in a youthful land of hope and 
promises, but which, like the promised land of old, is 
closed to those who wander in the desert of life. It is 
the great mystery of life over again—of humanity 
made for God, striving in vain to find happiness in 
those things which do not rest upon God or upon a 
supernatural basis, the vanity of vanities which pagan 
and believer alike have realized, the bitter wisdom 
which the world has learned through suffering and 
sorrow and sin and death. 


Our Mistake. 


Our system of training is frequently at fault. It 
runs to extremes. Where our girls are not entirely 
neglected, they are sometimes over-educated. By 
this I mean that they are given advantages which are 
denied to their brothers. The daughters of hard-work¬ 
ing, honest parents are kept at school, whilst their 
brothers are learning trades or spending their time at 





“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


63 


hard labor helping to support the family. The whole 
family is interested in seeing that the girls of the 
household receive as many of the accomplishments 
as possible. Music and painting and all those things 
which go to give a finish to a young lady’s training are 
added, with the result that the daughter of the mechanic 
or the artisan bye and bye considers herself a degree 
above her brother in the world and looks for her asso¬ 
ciates amongst those whose hands are not besmeared 
with the soot and grime of honest toil. Her brother 
must look for a wife amongst the girls of a humbler 
class. The overeducated mechanic’s daughter is too 
good for him. She aspires to a maid and a brown- 
stone front and a husband with immaculate linen. 
Marry a workingman! Heaven forbid! As a result 
the banker’s clerk and the young professional man are 
in great demand, even though the dust-begrimed 
worker draws twice the salary of either of them, and 
is, as a rule, in every way a very desirable husband. 

The cheap piano has turned the heads of many of 
our girls. As soon as they find themselves able to 
perpetrate a few of the soulful ballads of the hour on 
its keys, they begin to look around for some one 
able to keep them in a style befitting their higher at¬ 
tainments. The hero is sometimes slow in coming, 
and as a last resort they turn to the horny-handed sons 
of toil—but only as a last resort. 


Must Not Forget. 


Notwithstanding all that has been said, it is a fact, 
nevertheless, that the priest who stands at the altar 



64 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


railing on Sundays and gazes upon the faces of those 
who approach the table of the Lord understands well 
the place which the Catholic young woman occupies 
in the affections of the Church. He understands why 
she is treasured and watched over and cared for as 
the very apple of the Church’s eye. It is a place 
where she is ever in the majority. Despite her short¬ 
comings and her errors, she stands in a class all by 
herself. Her innocence, purity and maidenly modesty 
are acknowledged the world over. Humanity pays to 
her its tribute of respect. Her moral supremacy is 
unquestioned, and the Church is proud because it has 
made her so. It is jealous at the same time of her 
honor, and strives to safeguard by every means 
within its power. As the wife and mother of the 
future, her influence for good will be in proportion to 
the depth of her religious convictions and in her con¬ 
formity to the highest type of Christian womanhood. 
This she must never be permitted to forget. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

The Spineless Young Man. 

The letter which follows is so pertinent to the sub¬ 
ject in hand that I feel the reader will pardon me for 
giving it in full: 

“-, N. Y., Dec. 12, 1905. 

“Dear Reverend Father: I read your article on 
‘Mixed Marriages,’ and I would like to have you treat 
that subject fully before leaving it. This place has 
had a surfeit nf them, and there are more to follow. I 




“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


65 


must tell you of one with which I was recently brought 
in close contact in a somewhat unusual way. John 

D-has been about the only Catholic young man 

in the town earning a salary of over twelve hundred 
dollars a year, so we Catholic girls have been looking 
up to John. Alas! we were not attractive enough, 
and so he has left us for a pretty, gypsy-like Protestant 
girl, whose mother was an apostate. The girl was very 
nice about it, and she said she would go anywhere to be 
married; but they wanted a big, showy wedding. 

Mr. D- asked Father O’C. to marry them after 

the Rev. Dr. Somebody had gotten through. No one 
knows just what father said to him in reply, but if 
what he said from the pulpit on the two following Sun¬ 
days be a sample of his t remarks on that occasion, Mr. 

D-was greatly to be pitied. I did not happen to 

know Mr. D-personally, but I had to call on a 

man of his name a few days later on some company 
business, and, strangely enough, I discovered that the 

Mr. D- in question was none other than the 

prospective bridegroom. I never thought of its being 
his wedding day, but such it was; and his little mother, 
who received me at the door, sweetly invited me in, 
and half-shyly informed me that he was absent on 
very important business. Well she was a plain little 
old Irish woman, and lived in the quaintest old- 
fashioned house. With an Irish whisper, and with a sad 
little smile, she told me that John was to be married 
that very day, and did I not know him? I suppose 
the dear old soul was unhappy, and I did not mend 
matters by saying, ‘Too bad he did not marry one of 
his own kind!’ I could not help it. I thought of the 






66 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


butterfly ‘Protestant girl coming home to an Irish 
hearthstone, and I felt it was surely a mistake. Of 
course, she told me the whole story—how cruel Father 
O’C. had been, and how sorry she was for the young 
people. Oh, but I was in a box. I think Father O’C. 
is just splendid, and said so. Well, then, ‘wasn’t John 
right in trying to please the girl’s family?” Pledging 
me to secrecy, she told me, too, that John had gone 
down to Father Henry, of the neighboring parish, and 
Father Henry could do nothing for him. And wasn’t 
Father O’C. cruel indeed? ‘John sa id to me this 
morning,’ she continued, ‘Mother, I’ll be married by 
no priest,’ and isn’t he right?’ The little mother was 
full of the romance of true love, and how it never does 
to cross a man in his marriage. And while I listened 
to her little tale I wished she had been one of those 
stalwart mothers who fight for what is right, regard¬ 
less of consequences. The upshot of it all was that 
they had a big Protestant wedding, to which many of 
John’s Catholic friends were invited. There is no ex- 
communication here for doing such things, but it makes 
us all feel sick at heart; and there is nothing but bitter 
words for the spineless John and his unhappy little 
mother. Now, father, you have said unpleasant things 
about us Catholic girls, and I would like to know 
what you think of young men like John. 

“Yours, etc., 

What I think of John D-and his kind would 

not look very well if put into simple, plain, every-day 
language. I think, however, that the little Irish 
mother is largely to blame for John’s false step. The 




“THE OUGHT TO BE’S’ 


67 


true Catholic mother should have been made of sterner 
stuff. She ought to haVe had sense enough to realize 
that the butterfly maiden would have conceded a great 
deal in matters of religion in order to make sure of 
John, and been wise enough to impress her son with 
the importance of standing firm on so momentous an 
occasion. 


Undue Haste. 


A clerical friend of mine lays down the proposi¬ 
tion that “mixed marriages are always unnecessary. ,, 
In other words, there is no need of a mixed marriage 
if the Catholic party be possessed of sufficient zeal. 
The average non-Catholic has few well-defined re¬ 
ligious views. There is still, perhaps, a deep-rooted 
suspicion of Catholic teaching, but this suspicion is fre¬ 
quently a help rather than a hindrance. Inquiry brings 
with it an inevitable reaction against religious systems 
which have so freely employed the weapon of false¬ 
hood in their warfare against the Church. And at 
heart any man or woman worth having will appreciate 
a zeal which is concerned with their eternal welfare. 
The Catholic party has a right to demand beforehand 
a sympathetic study of the Church’s position in the in¬ 
terest of future peace. This study can ordinarily be 
made the occasion of deeper research and final accept¬ 
ance of the Catholic creed. All this implies delibera¬ 
tion and delay, and our young people are usually in a 
dreadful hurry when it is a question of marriage. 
There is more idiocy to the square inch in matters 
pertaining to marriage than there is in all the other 



68 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


combined affairs of human existence. Young people 
are not supposed to be responsible for what they do 
on such an occasion. The legislation of the Church 
and the dictates of common sense must give way before 
the whims and fancies of a maiden who is possessed 
with a desire to make her nuptials as romantic and as 
novel as possible. Romance is usually associated with 
haste, and haste with future regret. 

This is a matter in which wisdom and experience 
avail but little. Misguided love has been, and will 
continue to be, the most prolific source of human 
misery and human sin. The Church’s legislation has 
for its purpose the safe-guarding of the virtue and the 
happiness of those who enter the married state. 
Human passion is blind. The Church strives with all 
its might to protect its children from the consequences 
of this universal blindness. 

CHAPTER XV. 

Thieves, Common and Otherwise. 


Dirty Politics. 


The pastor of one of the most important parishes 
in a great western city recently said to me: “Father, 
I don’t want you to forget ‘Dirty Politics’ in your 
treatment of the ‘Ought-to-Be’s.” I believe that in 
my own parish more men have given up the practice 
of their religion through political corruption and its 
consequent evils than through all other causes com¬ 
bined. A very large proportion of the men of this 



“THE OUGHT TO BK’S 1 


69 


parish never hear Mass on Sunday. I would not be 
correct in saying that they have lost the Faith but they 
have become so dishonest, so corrupt, and so de¬ 
bauched as a consequence of the political methods in 
vogue in this particular part of the city, that they feel 
that religion can do them no good. 

The ring that has dominated politics in this ward for 
years has openly stood sponsor for vice and crime in 
its worst forms. It has protected for a consideration, 
the dive, the brothel, the obscene theatre, the gambling- 
den, the low saloon and all those habitations of evil in 
which the criminals of a city congregate. It has 
helped to elect notorious grafters and received its 
share of the plunder. And the sad part of it all is that 
some of the very worst grafters have been nominal 
Catholics. The worst theatre we have ever had in this 
city is owned and controlled by a man of this type. 
For years it was an assignation house on the largest 
possible scale, and so open and brazen did the manage¬ 
ment become, that free tickets of admission were 
lavishlv distributed even amongst the boys of the 
parochial schools. They were not satisfied with their 
clientele of Catholic men, young and old. Boys of 
tender years must be corrupted in order to keep up the 
supply of dupes and amateur criminals. When I 
publicly denounced the “system” and the malodorous 
ring behind it, I was severely censured by many of my 
own people for meddling in politics. It is all right and 
proper for so-called Catholic politicians to bring their 
religion into public disrepute. It is a rank indiscretion 
in a priest to make war on crime and criminals, pro¬ 
vided they come under the protection of what is known 


70 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


as “politics.” He must remain silent and see the boys 
and young men of his parish sucked down into the 
maelstrom of iniquity, because, perforce, the bene¬ 
ficiaries of corruption demand that he “stick to his 
sacristy and leave politics alone.” 


Pickpocket Ethics. 

What is true of this Western city is true of all the 
great cities of the country. Corrupt politics is every¬ 
where a powerful agency of evil. It brutalizes and 
degrades men, makes thieves and lawbreakers of them 
and justifies it all under the pretexts that “they all do 
it,” and that a form of dishonesty which becomes 
popular and universal is thereby freed from the taint of 
sin. The thief, therefore, provided he be a statesman, 
does not come under the same standard of ethics as 
the common, every-day pick-pocket. The burglar, the 
defaulter, and all the generations of petty thieves who 
prey upon society are all held bound in conscience to 
restitution. The rigors of the old seventh command* 
ment are reserved for them. The gentleman, who for 
a certain stipulated price helps to rob a state or a 
municipality—well, he is a thief of another kind and 
the problem of restitution is at least a doubtful one. 
There is a moral something about the bribes taken by 
politicians from thieves and gamblers to permit them to 
ply their n farious trades and an inviolability about 
the blood-money filched from fallen women, which 
renders the application of the principles of restitution 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


71 


exceedingly difficult. A big Catholic politician grows 
suddenly rich in mysterious ways and an incredulous 
public shakes its head and asks the question “Where 
did he get it?” and the wonder is why the Church 
tolerates him, and permits him to act as if he be.in good 
standing in her communion. He fools neither the 
Church nor the public but the Church like the state 
has to assume that the thief is not a thief until by due 
process of law he has been proven such. The Church 
has a private tribunal where thieves without number 
have been forced to disgorge, but some men’s consci¬ 
ences are easily formed and they are as dishonest 
with the priest in the confessional as they are with the 
public without. 

I sometimes feel that we would do well to preach the 
sixth commandment less and to dwell at greater length 
upon the “Thou Shalt not Steal” of the seventh. An 
impure man is ordinarily more easily converted than a 
dishonest one. The great stumbling block in the 
latter’s case is restitution. There is no place in 
Catholic theology for the casuistry which permits 
thieves to retain ill-gotten goods. The ancient prin¬ 
ciples of justice and right have not changed. They 
are as applicable to graft, bribery and corruption in 
politics as they are to the coarser forms of dishonesty. 
The moral teaching, which opens a spiritual loophole 
to the boodler and the grafter is on a par with those 
technicalities of the law, which enable them to keep 
out of the penitentiary and thus escape the civil con¬ 
sequences of their misdeeds. 


72 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


CHAPTER XVI. 

The Parish Rebels. 

History Repeated. 

It is an accepted axiom among priests that the 
censors, critics and chronic fault-finders of a parish 
sooner or later give up the faith. It is easy to under¬ 
stand why such should be the case. The bond between 
the priest as pastor and the people committed to his 
care is one of the closest and most intimate that can 
exist between the members of a human family. It is, 
in a certain sense, a sacramental bond, and one founded 
upon supernatural motives and calling for an unusual 
degree of mutual respect and reciprocal confidence. 
The priest, no matter what his personal faults may be, 
cannot escape a catholicity of affection for all the mem¬ 
bers of his flock, and cannot help feeling at the same 
time some of that breadth of charity exhibited by his 
Divine Master. His is a fatherly solicitude, which ex¬ 
tends to each and every member of his flock, without 
exception. The least he expects in return for his 
unceasing interest and unselfish devotion is a filial 
love and confidence and a readiness to make due allow¬ 
ance for his limitations and shortcomings. He is 
human and liable to err. Like his flock, he is weak and 
prone to sin, and he has a right to demand that he 
shall be treated as a human being and not as an in¬ 
fallibly wise, prudent, perfect and sinless mortal, who 
always practices heroic virtue and never makes a 
mistake. 



“THE) OUGHT TO BE’S” 


73 


An Odd Answer. 


There is a story told of a great French churchman 
who was sent by the Holy See to investigate a quarrel 
between a certain Bishop and some of his priests. 
The dissatisfied priests were called before him one by 
one, and he put to each of them the same question, “If 
every priest in this diocese did his duty would there 
be any trouble ?” Divers answers were given, until 
finally an old priest replied in a manner entirely unex¬ 
pected. “Your Grace,” he said, “as I understand it, 
Archbishops, Bishops, priests and people do their full 
duty only when they have attained that stage commonly 
known as the Beatific Vision. As I understand it, 
too, even the leaders of Israel examine their consciences 
and frequently cry ‘peccavi,’ because they have failed 
in the performance of that which the world calls duty. 
I think I have seen it somewhere in an old book that 
duty destitute of charity is tyranny in those who 
govern, and arrogant and presumptuous disobedience 
in those who are governed.” 

There was a wealth of hidden wisdom in the old 
priest’s answer. The perfect man is so rare that the 
species may be truly said to be extinct. The priest who 
can please everybody is an impossibility. The most 
he can hope for is to please the reasonable and the 
right-thinking by following the dictates of his con¬ 
science and by doing that which to him seems right. 



74 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


Their Methods. 


It not infrequently happens that the parish rebels are 
the first to welcome a new pastor on his arrival and 
in the early days of his administration are the loudest 
in their approval of everything he does. The old 
guard, the tried and trusted supporters of former ad¬ 
ministrations, remain in the background. They are 
glad, in a certain sense, to see the malcontents recon¬ 
ciled and taking their proper place in the ranks of the 
faithful. If the new pastor be of ordinary sagacity, 
he is not long in discovering that the best friends of 
the priest that goes are the best friends of the priest 
that comes; that the critics of his predecessor will in 
due season become his critics, and that the chronic 
fault-finder will return to his or her ways as soon as 
the novelty of the new order of things has worn 
away. 

I have heard it said by non-Catholic clergymen that 
the position of the average preacher who depends upon 
the whims and fancies of a fickle flock is a most undesir¬ 
able one, and they frequently envy the Catholic priest, 
whose tenure of office is dependent upon the opinion 
which the Bishop forms of his fitness for the place, 
rather than upon the choice of a congregation, few of 
whom look at the same thing in the same light. It is 
a truth, nevertheless, that a priest, like any other man, 
looks for gratitude and appreciation in return for his 
services. When this gratitude and appreciation are 
not forthcoming, the cross is hard to bear, and is only 
made tolerable by the consciousness that God sees it 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


75 


all and will judge and reward him according to the 
purposes and motives underlying his actions. 


Runs in the Family. 

The children of the priest-hunters, as a rule, turn 
out badly. Reverence and respect for the man who 
ministers at the altar is essentially a Catholic virtue. 
Where it is wanting there is something wrong. Where 
children hear nothing in the home but criticism of the 
priest and of his methods, and sometimes covert in¬ 
sinuations affecting his good name, they are liable to 
confound the teachings with the teacher, and to grow 
up with an instinct of hostility to the creed as well as 
to the priest. 

The parish critic is, in many cases, a disappointed 
little boss who has failed to rule the pastor. The num¬ 
ber of those amateur bosses, male and female, is legion. 
Their presumption is monumental. They are ready 
to dictate to the pastor in his church, the Bishop in 
his cathedral and the Pope on his pontifical throne. 
If the priest be a 'man of extraordinary patience, all 
is well; but if there be limits and bounds to his toler¬ 
ance of such people, the break comes sooner or later, 
and the boss is put to confusion and taught a severe 
lesson If, again, instead of taking the lesson to 
heart, he feels aggrieved, he forthwith constitutes hinf- 
self one of those trials and crosses which are the 
bitter portion of every priest’s life, and which win for 
many of them the true crown of priestly martyrdom. 



76 


‘THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


CHAPTER XVII. 

The Critic in the Pulpit. 

An Objection. 

‘‘And what have you to say/’ some one writes, “of 
the critic who occupies the pulpit? What do you think 
of chronic fault-finding in the preacher of severe 
censure, of indefensible and sometimes unprovoked 
abuse of the people? Have they no rights which the 
pulpit is bound to respect ? Shall the mirror of nature 
be held constantly before them and discreet silence be 
preserved when it is a question of the man, who fre¬ 
quently provokes the parish rebels to anger and re¬ 
crimination ?” 

I do not consider the point to be well taken. As a 
rule, the priest in the pulpit, like th)e priest in the con¬ 
fessional, sinks his own personality and delivers his 
message with a single eye to the salvation of his 
hearers. Hie may not be wise, prudent and judicious 
in all his utterances, but the fact remains that if some 
of his hearers feel aggrieved it is because, in the 
majority of cases, the shoe pinches and the shaft* 
delivered at random here and there hit a shining mark. 

I have sometimes felt that if there be any room for 
reproach against the pulipit, it is because of our lack 
of courage rather than because of fearlessness and 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


77 


plain speaking. The charge frequently made against 
the non-Catholic pulpit of the country is that it is 
time-serving, and dares not attack sin and vice in their 
strongholds. There is a story told of a young Angli¬ 
can curate who consulted his pastor as to a subject for 
his sermon on the following Sunday. Subject after 
subject was suggested, only to be rejected, for fear of 
offending the sensibilities of the people, some of whom 
were of high-church and some of low-church tenden¬ 
cies. The pastor finally settled the matter in an off¬ 
hand way. “My son,” he said, “my advice to you is 
this: Pitch into the Scribes and Pharisees, they have 
no friends!” It is the Pharisees of to-day, however; 
who are the first to resent the fearlessness and courage 
of the Catholic pulpit. 


The Old Fogey Pastor. 


One of the most cherished remembrances of my 
youthful days is that of a pioneer priest whose minis¬ 
trations have blessed my native parish for almost half 
a century. He is distinctively of the “old school,” 
and higher criticism and modern philosophical quib¬ 
bling with the great fundamentals find short shrift when 
they come in contact with his clear brain and unques¬ 
tioning acceptance of the whole body of Catholic doc¬ 
trine. I can still see the dry smile with which, on 
the occasion of a visit a few months ago, he dismissed 
the Abbe Loissey’s contentions. “These philosophical 



78 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


fellows,” he said, “would have us believe that a fisher¬ 
man was incapable of writing the Gospel of St. John. 
Our Lord knew better than to choose philosophers for 
apostles. Most of the errors of the world have come 
from philosophical chairs. Philosophy rejected Christ 
in the beginning. Its acceptance of His teachings has 
always struck me as being half-hearted and insincere. 
A fisherman could not write such a gospel, forsooth! 
If he could not, we are safe in asserting that a philoso¬ 
pher would be the last man in the world to be chosen 
for such a task.” 

We of the younger generation were wont in the 
olden days to regard our pastor as belonging to the old 
fogy type. From time to time we had an assistant, 
and the assistant, strange to say, was always more 
popular than the pastor. Many of us, however, have 
lived and learned, and somehow, with the growth of 
years, the conviction has grown upon me that the old 
pastor, with his rough and rugged honesty, his plain 
speaking and his steadfast insistence upon the great 
essentials, is not out of place even in this day and age; 
that his clear, unquestioning faith and his everlasting 
hammering away at plain, common, every-day mortal 
sin has still a large place in the economy of righteous¬ 
ness ; that modern dilletantism and modern care for the 
proprieties has much to learn from the old priest, who 
still calls a spade a spade and who takes no pains to 
sugarcoat the medicine which he administers to the 
weak in faith and morals. 


“THE) OUGHT TO BE’S 


79 


The Real Grievance. 


The finanacial problem frequently lies at the root of 
many people’s grievance against the pulpit. The priest 
must of necessity deal with money matters in a public 
way and one of the unpleasant things in connection 
with the whole business is that the many must be made 
to suffer because of the lack of readiness to do their 
duty on the part of the few. I am safe in asserting, 
however, that no one regrets the necessity of bringing 
money matters into the pulpit more than the priest, 
and many of them undergo privations and let import¬ 
ant parish interests suffer and go by default rather than 
justify the oft-repeated calumny of the critics that “it 
is money, money, and always money.” 


Must Be a Gentleman. 


When I was in the seminary I heard a great deal 
about the necessity of the priest ever and always being 
a gentleman. The word “gentleman” is a very in¬ 
definite term. The commonly accepted definition is: 
“One who never hurts the feelings of another.” The 
priest, who, from the pulpit, never hurts the feelings oT 
his auditors is to be complimented on ministering to a 
people who are well-nigh spirtually perfect. It is a 
case, however, where diplomacy may easily be another 
name for time-serving, and popularity be only another 
term for failure to preach the great eternal truths 
committed to the pastor’s keeping. 




80 


THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

FreaKs and Faddists. 

Pernicious Piety. 

I have a clerical friend whose life has been made 
miserable for several years through the idiosyncracies 
of a pious maiden lady, who fancies she has a mission 
in life. That mission is to promote the cause of total 
abstinence on every possible occasion. She is full of 
the most ardent zeal, but it is a zeal totally devoid of 
judgment. She has two bachelor brothers of very 
temperate habits, but she lives in an agony of fear lest 
they go out some night and come back confirmed 
inebriates. 

Her propaganda assumes a great variety of forms. 
She will stop the wife of a saloon-keeper in the vesti¬ 
bule of the church and plead with her to turn her 
husband from his evil ways. She mails radical tem¬ 
perance literature to prominent churchmen all over the 
country, and calls upon them to come out openly and 
courageously and assail the rum demon. She is full 
of dramatic invective, and bobs up in unexpected places 
with tracts and sermons, which she is ready to dis¬ 
tribute on the slightest provocation. In short, she is 
a pious nuisance of the most pronounced type, but the 
good priest has a hesitancy about suppressing her lest 
he prevent her doing a certain amount of good 
amongst men and women of her own peculiar mental 



“THE) OUGHT TO BE’S’ 


81 


caliber. He is at the same time morally convinced 
that in the long run she does more harm than good, and 
solemnly avers that women of her kind drive sane and 
sober people to drink. 

Her case, however, is not uncommon. She is merely 
one of many. The variety is almost infinite, but there 
are certain well-defined characteristics about them 
which serve to put them in a class all by themselves. 
They possess all the outward appearances of piety, but 
there is at bottom a spirit of criticism and disobedience 
to authority which sometimes leads to heresy and open 
rebellion. The old church does not move fast enough 
for them. They find many of the Protestant churches 
to be dominated by cranks and fool reformers, and 
they are surprised when priests and Bishops do not 
bubble over with enthusiasm, when their projects for 
the reformation and sanctification of the world are 
brought to their notice. 


Various Forms. 


Sometimes the crank is a well-meaning lady with a 
chain-prayer to some favorite saint, promising extra¬ 
ordinary rewards for a faithful recitation of the same 
and threatening dire calamities for failure to comply 
with the conditions laid down. In such matters the 
approbation of the Holy See and the “nihil obstat” of 
the Bishop are regarded as being wholly unnecessary. 
It is enough to state that it was revealed to some holy 



82 


“THE) OUGHT TO BE’S 


ccnobite or to some pious woman with an impaired 
digestion to make it an object of crank credulity. 

Sometimes it is a sensitive soul with a call to estab¬ 
lish a new and hitherto unheard of devotion in a parish; 
and when the pastor manifests a lack of interest it is a 
certain sign that he is lacking in zeal. Sometimes, 
again, it is pronouncedly pious graft masquerading 
under the guise of a popular devotion, and solely de¬ 
pendent for its success upon its appeal to the sympa¬ 
thies of this abnormal class of Catholics who cannot 
be made to understand that appeals of every kind 
should ever and always receive the sanction of the 
proper ecclesiastical authorities. Sometimes it is a 
believer in the wonder-working powers of some saintly 
relic of doubtful authenticity, or a would-be pilgrim 
to some far-off European shrine where the natives 
believe that some pious fetisch carried on their persons 
will protect them from the eternal fires, even if they 
miss Mass on Sundays and receive the sacraments 
only when in proximate danger of death. Such people 
are always ready to devote themselves to anything 
which bears the charm of novelty or to labor in a 
strange cause, but they hold themselves indifferent to 
the interests of their home parish, and regard with 
suspicion the priest who clings to the beaten paths and 
who fears to expose pious grafts and pious grafters lest 
he scandalize the weak who might be shocked at the 
things which are being done all over the world in the 
name of religion. 


‘THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


83 


Spiritual Fads. 


It is difficult to make some Catholics understand that 
the great means of salvation are those which are ready 
to hand—the sacraments of penance and the Holy 
Eucharist, prayer and the hearing of Mass whenever 
possible, but under penalty of grievous sin on Sun¬ 
days and holy days. It is difficult to make them un¬ 
derstand that devotion to our Immaculate Mother and 
to God’s great saints does not rest upon private and ac¬ 
cidental revelations to obscure individuals, but is part 
and parcel of the body of Catholic doctrine. It is 
difficult to make them understand that there are dan¬ 
gerous spiritual fads which priests and Bishops tolerate 
for fear of greater evils. It may shock many of them 
to learn that some of the greatest churchmen of the 
age regard the sad state of the Church in France and 
many European countries as the natural consequence 
of an undue following after the accidentals, whilst the 
great essentials of Catholicity were being neglected. 
The very people who will celebrate a feast day with 
great eclat and go in pilgrimage to some famous shrine 
will not hear Mass on Sundays and holy days, and will 
smile at the idea of making their Easter duty. 

I am far from condemning any holy or pious Catho¬ 
lic practice. They all play their part in the Catholic 
system, but it must never be forgotten that it is a 
minor part, and that insistence upon the great es¬ 
sentials lies at the root of a nation’s steadfastness in 
the run of centuries. 



84 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


CHAPTER XIX. 

Masonry. 


An Enigma. 


I have been many times asked why it is that France, 
though nominally a Catholic country, persists in bitterly 
persecuting the Church, and I must confess that I 
have frequently been at a loss for an answer. The 
French situation is very much of an enigma to the 
average American. I have asked the same question 
of French priests and French laymen, and have never 
been satisfied with the answer. One of the shrewdest 
of American priests, and at the same time one of our 
ablest editorial writers, visited France within the last 
year, and on his return declared openly his inability to 
fathom the situation. On his return from a previous 
visit he had positively announced that the end of the 
French Republic was near at hand. On both occasions 
he had studied the situation right on the ground, and 
had come into close contact with some of the leading 
citizens and churchmen of France without arriving at 
any conclusion as to the real causes of the difficulties 
between the Church and the State. 

I believe, however, that the difficulty in France is a 
political rather than a religious one. A corrupt, un¬ 
scrupulous political regime has the country by the 
throat, and its object in this persecution is simply and 
plainly plunder. The spoilation of the religious orders 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


85 


is plain robbery, pure and simple, and can be called by 
no other name. 

“Why,” some one will ask, “have not the people 
risen up and deprived those robber politicians of their 
power for evil?” And my answer is “Why have the 
people of this country permitted graft to become so 
prevalent in State and municipal affairs, notwithstand¬ 
ing the fact that it clearly lies in their power to oust 
the grafters?” Thieving politicians are the same the 
world over, and France to-day has the most corrupt 
political organization on the face of the earth. Its 
ramifications spread out into every community Backed 
by an immense army of “functionaries,” whose 
offices depend upon the pleasure of those in power, it 
controls elections, counts the votes and sees to it that 
the people’s representatives/ are its own creaturies. 
Popular government is a colossal farce. It is the 
reign of a corrupt ring perpetuating itself by corrupt 
methods, and having for its purpose the aggrandize¬ 
ment of those who control and manage it. There is 
less real liberty in France to-day than in any European 
country, Russia and Turkey not excepted. Its govern¬ 
ment is an organized gang of thieves, who, having 
tired of plundering the country at large, have now 
turned their attention to the revenues and possessions 
of the Church. 


Behind the Throne. 

Back of it all stands a powerful secret society con¬ 
trolled and dominated to a large extent by the Jews of 



86 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


Europe—a society whose boast is that it controls the 
politics and dictates the policies of the leading Euro¬ 
pean governments. I am not a Jew-baiter, and believe 
in justice to the Jew as well as to the Christian; but, 
from a close examination of Freemasonry, and particu¬ 
larly of European Freemasonry, I have come to the 
conclusion that it may be rightly termed to-day a covert 
sect of modern Judaism. The Jew, through this 
society, is getting back at the Christians of the world 
for the wrongs and injustices visited upon him during 
many centuries. The results are certainly creditable to 
his foresight and sagacity. 

This, I am well aware, is a somewhat radical view, 
and one that will be pooh-poohed by many of my 
readers. I believe, however, that this view furnishes 
the key to the solution of the French political enigma 
and to many other political problems of recent times. 
It is an indisputable fact that Freemasonry is the 
power behind the throne in nearly every country in 
Europe, and it is, at the same time, an equally indis¬ 
putable fact that European Freemasonry is largely 
under the control and direction of the Jews. 

One thing has struck me forcibly in examining the 
religious principles and rites to which Freemasonry 
clings and that those principles and rites are almost 
purely Judaistic. I think it can be clearly shown, too, 
that the policy of the “inner circle” is antagonistic to 
Christianity in every country in the world, and particu¬ 
larly to the strongest and most consistent of the Chris¬ 
tian denominations—the Catholic Church. 


THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


87 


A Bad Record. 


There are those in the Church to whom Masonry is 
a nightmare, and those again, who regard it as a much 
overrated influence for evil. It has been specifically 
condemned by the Holy See, first, because in almost all 
European countries it has been the hotbed of revolution 
and rebellion against the lawfully constituted authori¬ 
ties; secondly, because it has claimed, and still claims 
in principle, the power of life and death over its mem¬ 
bers ; thirdly, because it claims in certain matters to 
be above the law in every country in the world, and, 
fourthly, because of its open warfare upon the Papacy 
in its numerous struggles with its temporal foes, and 
particularly with the Sardinian usurper. 

It is an old boast of the Masons that a member of 
the craft has rarely suffered the extreme penalty of 
the law for the crime of deliberate murder. There are 
well authenticated cases on record in which Masons 
have escaped the consequences of grave crimes, such 
as treason, homicide and the like, because of their 
affiliation with the society. And yet we hear it said 
the Church is illiberal and lacking in the modern spirit 
in condemning an organization with such a history and 
standing for such vicious principles. 

I am willing to concede that if Masonry throughout 
the world were as we find it here in America there 
would be little need for severity on the part of the 
Church, but the Church is a world-wide institution and 



88 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


stands for world-wide principles. It has never lacked 
the courage to condemn error, no matter how power¬ 
fully intrenched: and in condemning Masonry it has 
conferred a priceless boon upon the civilized world and 
struck at one of the most dangerous and insidious foes 
of the human race. 

It has been demonstrated long ago to the satisfaction 
of the church authorities that the Odd Fellows and 
Knights of Pythias are nothing more or less than cheap 
imitations of Masonry and that the influences of these 
societies have not been favorable to Catholic faith and 
practice. The ideal which they hold to their members 
is a pagan rather than a Christian one and the Catholic 
Church still clings to the belief that the Christian ideal 
is that towards which humanity must strive. 


Favoritism and Injustice. 

We have heard it said that there is no place in 
Masonry for bad men, but we have found it dominated 
in many places by unscrupulous politicians and by 
men of doubtful moral standing amongst their neigh¬ 
bors. We have seen it made the medium of gross fa¬ 
voritism and rank injustice wherever the interests of 
brother Masons are at stake. We have found in the 
works of its authorized writers violent opposition to 
the Church and religion in general, and we have come 
to the conclusion that the Church acted wisely and 
well in forbidding Catholics, under pain of excom¬ 
munication, to enter its secret portals. 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


89 


The Church has been dealing with the world for 
almost two thousand years, and is acquainted by this 
time with most of the weak spots in humanity’s armor. 
It has guided its children, century after century, 
through the mazes of doubt and error. It has issued 
triumphant from the conflict with mightier foes than 
Masonry, and is quick to discern the cloven hoof under 
the garb of spurious morality and counterfeit philan¬ 
thropy. There is no halt in its message and no fear in 
its tone when it proclaims, as it did in the olden days, 
“Get thee behind me, Satan.” 


A Strange Admission. 


The Church is neither liberal, modern, progressive 
nor free in the commonly accepted meaning of those 
terms. It cannot be liberal in dealing with truth, for 
liberality in matters pertaining to truth is ridiculous. 
Liberality with the multiplication table, with the prob¬ 
lems of Euclid or with scientific truths in general is 
inconceivable. Why, then, demand it when the highest 
of all truths and principles are called into question? 
It cannot be modern, because God, the devil and 
humanity have not changed since the day of its in¬ 
stitution. It cannot be progressive, because progress 
implies change, and there is no change in the conditions 
upon which the woi Id’s salvation depends. The 
Church is free with the freedom of Christ, but it is 
not free to teach error or to compromise with vicious 
principles, no matter how carefully sugar-coated or 
how insidiously advanced. It might have gained many 



90 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


a temporary victory in the past by compromising with 
wrong, by acceding to the desires of time-serving 
generations; but such victories would have robbed it 
long since of the world’s respect, and would have 
brought it down to the level of those men-made creeds, 
“who crook the pregnant hinges of the knee that thrift 
may follow fawning.” 

CHAPTER XX. 

The Fraternals and Cheap Insurance. 


Overdone. 


The secret society business, in Western parlance, 
has run itself into the ground. There is hardly a 
grown person in the country to-day who does not 
belong to some one or other of the numerous lodges 
that have sprung up on all sides. To the credit of the 
small lodges, it may be said that they have administered 
a severe blow to the pretensions of Masonry. Ameri¬ 
can Masonry is a sort of rich man’s social club, and a 
poor man has no business in it. It claims to possess a 
superior brand of brotherly benevolence, but the fact 
remains that here, as elsewhere, its higher circles today 
to the rich and great in the social and political world. 
Its benefits are largely imaginary, and its influence a 
negative quantity in an age which demands, above all 
things, business ability and personal integrity. It is 
still, perhaps, within its power to make or unmake a 
politician, but the honor of such a proceeding is at best 
a very doubtful one. 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


91 


The fraternal orders do a great deal of positive good, 
and were it not for their silly rituals and their apings 
of the secret forms of the condemned societies their 
membership would never be called into question by the 
authorities of the Church. The ritual is the chief ob¬ 
stacle, and it seems strange that more of those societies 
have had not sagacity enough to remove this bar to 
Catholic membership. 


Protection vs. Piety. 

Catholics want insurance, not religion; and they 
resent the presumption of those who attempt to supply 
them with both. How often have we heard it said by 
non-Catholics, “My lodge is religion enough for me.” 

It is this attempt on the part of such organizations 
to supply a code of morals as well as protection for the 
heirs after death which the Church resents, and will 
continue to resent. 

The average Protestant is of the broad-gauge type, 
and anything in the line of a religious ritual or cere¬ 
mony is permissible. They wonder why it is that Cath¬ 
olic priests will not permit prayers and ceremonies 
originating in a committee of indifferent Christians to 
be tacked on to the regular Catholic burial service, or, 
in fact, to take the place of such services. These rites 
and ceremonies may mean anything or nothing. They 
are performed over the pagan, Jew or Christian with 
equal readiness, and, from the standpoint of spiritual¬ 
ity, imply nothing but the universal belief of Ameri- 



92 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


cans that it is good form to bury people with a religi¬ 
ous ceremony of some kind. 

There seems to be a general impression at the same 
time that cheap insurance has no attractions except 
when coupled with an opportunity to go through some 
childish form of initiation, and that degrees and high- 
sounding titles must form an essential part of such 
initiation. The whole thing is nothing more nor less 
than a species of hazing, indulged in by fathers and 
mothers of families and by people who ought to know 
better. It is a compound of horseplay and buffoonery, 
with a few attenuated principles of wordly wisdom and 
Christian charity thrown in for effect. 


Blind Obedience. 

I have not dwelt at any length upon the element of 
blind obedience which enters to a certain extent into 
the initiatory ceremonies of nearly all the secret orders. 
Few of them demand an obedience which conflicts with 
a member’s conscience, and amongst those who still 
retain it in their ceremonials there is a disposition to 
regard it as an obsolete and unreasonable requirement 
and one which the intelligence and good sense of the 
world has outgrown. 

No reasonable man to-day questions the value of 
life insurance, and its important place in the struggle 
for existence. It is the poor man’s best means of 
providing for his family, and the Church recognizes 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


93 


this fact by giving its approval to fraternal orders 
which are distinctively Catholic. Those Catholic soci¬ 
eties are doing everywhere to-day a vast amount of 
good, and there is no danger that at some future time 
their members will be compelled to leave them because 
of some implicit or explicit condemnation on the part 
of those who guard the spiritual welfare of the faithful. 


A Few Whys. 

It is only just that we should give the condemned 
secret societies full credit for all the good they do. 
They care for the sick and the afflicted, comfort the 
widow and the orphans and in doing this do a truly 
noble and commendable work. All this, however, and 
more could be done without making such organizations 
mediums for the propagation of irreligious and dan* 
gerous principles. The Church says to those societies, 
Keep the good you have and eliminate the evil, and 
we will approve and and praise rather than rebuke and 
condemn. Cut out your silly rituals; leave religion 
alone; do not try to make your constitutions and by¬ 
laws a complete code of morals for your members, and 
all will be well. The Church believes in protecting the 
family. It believes in works of benevolence and deeds 
of brotherly love. It declares at the same time true 
morality to be impossible without Jesus Christ and His 
saving doctrines, and that to it has been committed 
the task of imparting the principles of religious truth 



94 


“THK OUGHT TO BE’S” 


which lie at the root of Christian morals. Do as the 
American Constitution does; leave religion to the 
churches and devote your energies to those things 
which tend to the social uplifting and the physical bet¬ 
terment of your fellow-men and the ban of condemna¬ 
tion will be speedily removed. You cannot claim kin¬ 
ship with the secret fomentors of revolution and rebel¬ 
lion in other lands and find fault with the Church which 
has the courage to condemn your secret political machi¬ 
nations. We refuse to accept your vague and nebular 
principles of morality as a substitute for revealed truth, 
your particular brand of brotherly love as a substitute 
for true Christian charity. We have heard all your 
high-sounding professions, your loud proclamations 
of devotion to the golden rule; but it is not these we 
want. We want a few facts. If you stand for correct 
principles and high ideals, why cloak it all with a garb 
of absolute secrecy? Why not proclaim those great 
truths and much-lauded principles from the very 
house-tops ? The world stands in sore need of preach¬ 
ers such as you claim to be. Why imitate the Egyp¬ 
tian priests of old and impart your saving truths to 
the select few who have crossed “the burning sands” 
on the backs of mythical camels, which to the unitiated 
bears a striking resemblance to that superstition of 
which you are so ready to accuse us? Name if you 
can one single movement which you have inaugurated 
for the uplifting of the race? Your words are not 
enough. We wants deeds and facts, not empty plati¬ 
tudes and meaningless professions. 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


95 


Consequence and Cause. 


I have found that Catholic men as a rule enter the 
forbidden secret societies only after they have grown 
remiss in the practice of their religion. I have found, 
too, that it is the poorly instructed who are most easily 
caught by the pretensions of such organizations. 
Mystery and secrecy have ever had an attraction for 
the human species. When to these is added the prom¬ 
ise of an indefinite influence and a higher authority 
amongst men through a secret bond of fellowship, we 
can understand something of the hold which such soci¬ 
eties retain over the uneducated and the uninstructed. 
It is a reversal of the ancient axiom, “Knowledge is 
power.” Under the new order of things there is a 
possibility that ignorance can become powerful and as¬ 
sume a position to which it is not otherwise entitled, 
and hence arises the oft-repeated and oft-refuted ac¬ 
cusation that the Church, for the furtherance of its own 
ends, delights to hold its children in ignorance and dark¬ 
ness. It is not the light, however, which the Church 
fears, but the arrogant and pretentious substitute which 
goes by that name amongst the children of darkness the 
world over. It is not liberty which it fears so much as 
the insidious and dangerous thraldom, born of un¬ 
bridled license and corrupted morals, which passes for 
liberty amongst the multitude. The Church fears ig¬ 
norance almost as much as it fears sin. After three 
hundred years of warfare with organized falsehood, 
it is prepared to welcome everything which makes for 
light and truth. 



96 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


CHAPTER XXI. 

Fighting for the Future. 


The Sore Spot. 


The real sore spot of America is the neglect of the 
religious training of the children. We have become a 
nation of unbelievers, and all because so-called Chris¬ 
tian fathers and mothers fail to instill into the minds 
and hearts of their children the fundamental teachings 
of Christianity. I believe that thoughtful Protestants 
all over the country are beginning to realize more and 
more every day the wisdom of the Catholic Church in 
establishing parochial schools wherever possible. 
They realize that they are face to face with a crisis, and 
that unless some steps be taken to safeguard the faith 
of the coming generations-, evangelical Christianity is 
doomed to early decay. The Sunday school, with its 
half-hour or hour of religious instruction of no par¬ 
ticular and definite character, has been found to be in¬ 
sufficient. Where there is no home training in Chris¬ 
tian principles and no insistence upon the fundamentals 
in dogmas and morals, it is worse than useless. It was 
fashionable amongst non-Catholics a generation ago 
to assert that Catholic children were reared in ignor¬ 
ance and superstition. The ignorance and superstition 
of the Protestant children who come from time to time 
to our own Sunday schools are truly appalling. I have 
personally taken pains on many occasions to find out 



1 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S’’ 


97 


what such children know of God and of the things of 
God. Their knowledge of Christian teaching is, as a 
rule, of the of the most elementary kind. They have 
been told something of our blessed Lord and a great 
many things about the intrinsic excellence of goodness 
in general, but the instruction imparted to them is of 
that mawky, sentimental, indeterminate kind which 
vanishes with the ideals and emotions of childhood. 
The child is taught to memorize a few texts of Script¬ 
ure, but even in matters pertaining to the Sacred 
Scriptures he finds, at home, much incredulity and 
much that tends to render valueless the instruction im¬ 
parted to him in the Sunday school. There never was 
a time when intelligent Protestants longed so earnestly 
and so ardently for a definite and distinct body 
of religious doctrine. Nebular Christianity is an ab¬ 
solute, total and irretrievable failure. Deny it as they 
may, they are turning to the old Church for guidance 
in doctrine and practice, and demonstrating in an 
effective way the truth of Frederick Harrison’s famous 
assertion that “time vindicates every Catholic prin- 
ciple. ,, 


Not so Excellent. 


Many of our people have come to the conclusion, 
somehow, that the education given in our parish 
schools is inferior to that given in the public schools. 
The real truth is that in our Catholic insti¬ 
tutions the training is vastly more thorough, more 



98 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


systematic and more practical. I am writing of the 
West, and of conditions with which I am more or less 
familiar. And here it can be said, with due regard 
to truth and justice, that our public school system 
leaves much to be desired. Out here everybody who 
goes through public school graduates and graduation 
means simply that the pupil has passed through a 
certain number of grades and has followed the regular 
curriculum of the school for a certain number of years. 
From the High School the pupil passes to the Univer¬ 
sity and here again the same methods prevail. Every¬ 
body, who enters and spends the prescribed time 
graduates and there is scarcely any such a thing as 
being set back for ignorance or incompetency. I have 
found everywhere in our Catholic schools a striving 
after thoroughness, particularly in the primary grades 
and a disposition to avoid those fads, with which the 
public school curriculum is overloaded. Our teaching 
orders as a rule, are up-to-date and strictly alive to the 
educational needs of the hour. They realize that to 
succeed they must do even better work than the public 
schools, and hence our schools are characterized every¬ 
where by thoroughness, efficiency and a striving after 
the practical in educational matters. We have not the 
means at our disposal, which the public schools have, 
but our children have the advantage from the stand¬ 
point of sane and practical methods and they possess 
the additional advantage of being educated under a 
system which recognizes the fact that they have im¬ 
mortal souls and that the spiritual welfare of the chil¬ 
dren is paramount to all other considerations. 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


99 


CHAPTER XXII. 

Simple but Sublime. 


A Bitter Lesson. 


The so-called Reformation impressed upon the 
Church for all time to come the danger of popular ig¬ 
norance, particularly in those matters which bear upon 
religion. Nations and peoples accepted the new creeds 
of the reformers without realizing the magnitude of 
the principles involved in the change of faith. The 
movement came like a bolt of lightning from a clear 
sky. There was no heresy or error to combat, and the 
shepherds slept unconscious of the fact that an enemy 
lurked without the fold. Printing was invented. 
Human knowledge became more easy of access. New 
hopes were suddenly aroused in the bosoms of the 
downtrodden masses of the world. The shepherds 
still slept. They did not realize until too late that a 
new power had entered and taken its place on the 
world’s stage and that because of that new power the 
Church would rule henceforth not so much through 
threats and anathemas as through appeals to human 
intelligence and to the highest and best instincts of the 
human heart. The fathers of the Church who met 
in the great Council of Trent did much for truth 
and civilization. The canons of that council are 
the common law of Christianity. In them there is 
no shuffling, no quibbling, no equivocation, no com¬ 
promise, but a clear-cut declaration of Christian 

lofc. 



100 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


truth and Christian teaching. But this is not the 
council’s greatest glory. Its greatest glory is its 
trumpet call inviting priests and people the world over 
to labor unceasingly for the instruction of children in 
the simple, plain, common, every-day truths of religion. 
From that hour the care of the children has been the 
dominant note of the Church’s activity, and the all¬ 
importance of this duty has grown upon the Church 
with the growth of years. 


The True Pastor. 


I am about to make a strange statement, and it is 
this: I regard the encyclical of our Holy Father on 
the teaching of catechism as the most important docu¬ 
ment of its kind that has emanated from the See of 
Peter, since the days of the Council of Trent. It deals 
with no perversion of the human intellect, with none of 
the philosophical errors so prevalent in the world. It 
deals with the real sore spot of humanity—neglect of 
the religious training of the children. We can see the 
consequence of this neglect on all sides. The proofs 
are ready to hand. It was reserved for a Sovereign 
Pontiff who had been a parish priest, who had seen 
with his own eyes the fruits of this neglect amongst 
the members of his flock, to call the attention of the 
Christian world from imaginary and secondary dan¬ 
gers to that which constitutes a perpetual and ever¬ 
present menace. Ask any parish priest, as he stands 
on the altar, to look out upon his flock can pick out 
those who, in his opinion, will certainly be lost to the 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


101 


Church in the days to come. The task is not an easy 
one, but there is one class of whose defection he is 
almost certain. That class comprises the poor, neg¬ 
lected, half-instructed children of the careless and the 
indifferent. They are the future “ought-to-be’s” of 
the Church in every country in the world. They offer 
no problems calling for the application of intricate 
solutions, but for the simple, plain, common, homely 
remedy—the catechism, in the hands of the earnest 
parent and the zealous priest. We have had enough 
and more than enough of the abstract and the philo¬ 
sophical. The Holy Father realizes this, and bids 
us get down to the useful and the practical. When 
the great Gerson gave up his professor’s chair to 
teach catechism to little children, he gave an example 
which many modern professors might well imitate. 
We need fewer professors and more catechists; less 
beating of the air concerning controverted points of 
philosophy and theology and more attention to those 
first principles embodied in catechetical teaching. 
“Teach the catechism to the children in the homes, 
teach it to the children in the churches.” This is the 
burden of the Holy Father’s message. Happy the 
country that realizes its importance and endeavors to 
live up to it. 

A determined stand for Catholic principles lies at 
the root of all the Church’s victories. The weak-kneed, 
temporizing policy has always failed. In its demand 
for a Catholic training for our Catholic children the 
Church is merely following the instinct of self-preser¬ 
vation. We are building schools to-day at a great 


102 


‘THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


sacrifice and supporting them all over the country, be¬ 
cause we learned to our cost years ago that our children 
could not be educated in an atmosphere of religious in¬ 
difference, or perhaps positive hostility, without be¬ 
coming tainted and poisoned by that atmosphere. One 
of the strangest things, however, in connection with 
this whole matter is the fact that many apparently in¬ 
telligent Catholics have failed to realize the importance 
of the principles, at stake, and that they persist in dis¬ 
regarding the lessons of the past as well as the posi¬ 
tive legislation of the present. Such people surely put 
an effective argument in the mouths of those who 
believe that one religion is as good as another. 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

Why Girls go Wrong. 


Almost Unanimous. 


The Legislature of Massachusetts has just passed a 
bill forbidding girls under seventeen years of age to 
attend public dances unless accompanied by the parents 
or guardians. On the face of it, it seems a more or 
less indefinite law; but it was passed almost unani- 
mouslv because there was a cry from every part of 
the State that hundreds of girls were being brought to 
destruction through attendance at public dance halls 
and similar places of amusement. Over fifty dives 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


103 


and dens of iniquity were closed in Buffalo last week, 
and the keepers of those dives retorted by declaring 
unanimously that the girls who frequented their places 
were already ruined and depraved when they came 
there, and that the great medium through which their 
ruin had been brought about was the public dance 
halls and skating rinks—places of amusement where 
young girls were allowed to go and meet whomsoever 
they would. 

The chief of police of New York has made public a 
statement, in which he says that “three-fourths of the 
abandoned women of the city were made so by danc¬ 
ing/' When Governor Folk was district attorney of 
Missouri he stated that over eighty per cent, of the un¬ 
fortunate women of St. Louis became such through the 
dance halls and dancing parlors of the city. And these 
men are not alone in their opinion. A mother superior 
of the Convent of the Good Shepherd assured me the 
other day that a great majority of the girls under the 
care of their sisters all over the country had been led 
away from the path of virtue through the medium of 
the dance. Statements such as these are calculated to 
make earnest people at least stop and think. Girls do 
not become bad in a day or a week. It is usually a 
slow process. Most of them are weak and fall, let it 
be candidly said, through forms of temptation which 
are commonly considered to be sources of legitimate 
amusement and recreation. The devil scarcely ever 
fails to sugar-coat the deadly drug. In spite of all the 
countless army of harlots, from Herodias down to the 
New York Bowery, there are those who will not believe 


104 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S’ 


that so simple a form of amusement as dancing can be 
attended with such serious results. 


Well to Admit. 


It is well right here, I think, to make an admission. 
Amongst the young people of this day and age dancing 
is one of the most popular forms of amusement. I 
will admit, at the same time, that under proper super¬ 
vision dancing can be made a more or less harmless 
pastime. Our Catholic girls, as a rule, are pure and 
clean of heart. They are innocent, and the dance, 
under proper environments, is rarely a source of dan¬ 
ger. All this I know to be true, but it is true only of 
those girls who have pleasant homes and home sur¬ 
roundings. It is the poor girl who has to seek without 
her own home for the amusement and recreation which 
the youthful heart craves, who has to go out on the 
streets for her associates and companions, who, being 
shut out from what is known as good society, seeks 
those forms of amusement where all the classes and 
conditions of society, but particularly the worst, meet 
and mingle on an equal basis. Here is where the real 
harm is done. Any form of amusement in which the 
innocent are brought into familiar contact with the 
base and the vicious is reprehensible, and should be 
avoided as the plague. The parents of such girls gen¬ 
erally find out, when too late, that what is no tempta- 
iton to them may have proven a grievous temptation 
to young people with the heyday of youth coursing 
through their veins. 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


105 


A Misnomer. 


It should not be forgotten, at the same time, that the 
unfavorable character of the home surroundings has 
frequently much to do with the subsequent career of 
the children. Boys and girls have frequently gone to 
destruction because their homes were unworthy of be¬ 
ing designated by that sacred title. It is not always a 
question of poverty. Some of the best men and 
women that the world ever saw came out of poor and 
humble homes. Riches have been, from the beginning, 
more productive of vice than poverty. There is patience 
and purity, and self-denial and unselfishness to 
be found in abundance in the lives of our Catholic poor. 
It is a lack of the home spirit—a something which 
makes the home different from any other place in the 
world. And the absence of this home spirit is fre¬ 
quently found amongst the better classes, sometimes 
even amongst those whom the world calls rich. Where- 
ever it is found, the children seek for their recreation 
elsewhere, and are in constant danger of falling under 
influences which are never present in the true home. 

I have frequently seen it that a fruitful source of 
destruction of the young is the drink evil, and particu¬ 
larly in the case of the mother of the family. A drunk¬ 
en mother is almost too horrible to contemplate. Can 
it be wondered at that the children of such a mother 
go wrong? The wonder would be rather, if reared in 
such conditions, they should retain even the outward 
appearance of virtue. Fortunately, such examples are 
rare, and it can be said with truth t^at it is not the 



106 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S : 


drunken mother who is most frequently to blame. It 
is the unwise mother, who has not endeavored to make 
the home a real home, who has lost control of her 
children in their early years and who cannot exert it 
when the time comes for her to do so. Her task is 
hard at any time and at all times. It is particularly so 
when she has reared her children without the salutary 
restraints of religion and worldly prudence. This is 
an old theme, but it is, unfortunately one that is ever 
new. The French have a saying, when a man goes 
wrong, “Look for the woman in the case”—“Cher- 
chez la femme.” When girls go wrong, look to the 
home and seek for the cause in ninety-nine cases out 
of a hundred in the lack of the proper home influences 
and, above all, of the home restraints. It is the sore 
spot of the world over again in a common and most 
pathetic form. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

The Other Side. 

The Girl Who WorKs. 

The American girl who is earning her own living, 
and striving earnestly to be all that she should be, is 
certainly deserving of a great deal of respect. It 
matters not what her race or creed may be, or in what 
class of toilers her lot is cast, she is an honor to her 
sex, and the nation takes its hat off to her wherever 
she is found. Her path is rarely strewn with roses, 
and as a rule it is beset with many temptations. She 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


107 


comes sooner or later to have rather a poor opinion of 
the whole male persuasion, and the reasons are self- 
evident. She finds, too, that eternal vigilance is the 
price of a pure conscience and an unsullied reputation. 
She sees the weak, the willful, the wayward, the fool¬ 
ish, and the indiscreet fall by the wayside, and she has 
the consolation of knowing that she is happier and 
better off in every way than those who wandered from 
the ways of innocence. 

Young women of this kind nearly always possess a 
certain sensitiveness of conscience; for a genuinely 
good woman devoid of religion and conscience is al¬ 
most inconceivable. If she be a Catholic, she learns 
early in life that womanly virtue is largely of a super¬ 
natural character, and depends in a great measure 
upon the supernatural aids which religion supplies. 

It must not be forgotten, however, that her more un¬ 
fortunate sister was not bom bad. She possessed the 
same innate love of righteousness, and whilst she 
went down through the successive stages of wrong¬ 
doing, she never ceased to be a woman, with a woman’s 
love of innocence and purity and a woman’s loathing 
of the weakness against which she struggled in vain. 


The Crucial Time. 


In most cases it was the initial stage that determined 
her fate. The initial stage has always and ever been 
the same. It is the stage of parental neglect, the 
crucial time in a girl’s life, when, through youth and 
immaturity, she takes the first wrong step. And right 



108 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S : 


here is to be found the cause of causes, as far as the 
destruction of our young women is concerned. Ameri¬ 
can fathers and mothers have departed from the 
ancient standards in the bringing up of their children, 
and particularly of their girls. We have somehow 
come to believe that the girl baby, rocked in the cradle 
of American liberty, is immune from the contagion of 
vice; that there is a something in the American atmos¬ 
phere which justifies a freedom from the restraints im¬ 
posed upon young people by every work on dogma and 
morals that has ever been written. We seem to feel 
somehow that our young people can enjov liberties 
which were not permissible in the days of their fathers 
and mothers, and that a virtue which will not stand the 
test is scarcely worth preserving. 


An Abused Term. 


Commonplace statistics and unassailable facts must 
give way before a modern system of morals which 
holds, as a basic principle, that if the observance of 
the Ten Commandments be incompatible with the full¬ 
est exercise of human liberty, so much the worse for 
the Commandments. As a result the nation has paid 
a bitter penalty. It has witnessed an annual holocaust 
of young men and maidens offered at the shrine of a 
false goddess, to whom has been given one of the most 
sacred of all names—liberty. It has witnessed the 
gradual removal of all moral restraints, but, saddest 
of all, the removal of those parental restraints which 
lie at the root of a nation’s righteousness. 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


109 


“Let me write a nation’s songs and I care not who 
makes her laws,” said an old poet. In these words he 
merely gives expression to the great truth that home 
influences and the character of the nation’s homes in¬ 
evitably determine the trend of a nation’s life. 


A Voice From the Past. 


“O Christian parents,” said a great French preacher 
a hundred years ago, “care for your boys, but, above 
all, care for your girls in their tender years. Care for 
them as the tigress careth for her young; care for them 
as the eagle careth for its brood. Beware of that 
liberty whose enjoyment is fraught with destruction. 
The days are evil in which we live. The -tempter is 
abroad in many guises, and the hearts of the innocent 
are frequently corrupted even before you suspect the 
presence of danger. Remember the days of your own 
youth, and the hidden snares which encompassed your 
paths. Remember, too, that this a matter in which 
it is better to sin now on the side of severity than 
later on to have your gray hairs brought down in sor¬ 
row to the grave.” 

Those words are as applicable to our own times and 
conditions as if they had been uttered yesterday. Pa¬ 
rental neglect is the cause of causes when there is ques¬ 
tion of American girls who have gone wrong. The 
fathers and mothers of the country—even those who 
are Catholic—have departed from the ancient stand¬ 
ards. They have become inoculated with the poison 
of liberal ideas and a bogus morality. The maxims of 



no 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


the saints, the warnings of religion, the wisdom of the 
centuries that have passed and gone are all forgot¬ 
ten in the midst of a senseless clamor for a vague free¬ 
dom in matters where freedom means nothing but the 
privilege of violating the Commandments with im¬ 
punity. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

The Fallen Woman. 


Truly Appalling. 


I have been assured by one of the most eminent 
criminologists of the country that there are more than 
300,000 fallen women in the towns and cities of the 
United States. By the term “fallen women" I mean 
the professionally vicious, and these alone. There is 
•no means of computing that great army of unfortunate 
maidens who have “gone wrong," but who have still 
enough of the sensibilities of true womanhood left to 
preserve the outer semblance of respectability. There 
is no denying that there are altogether too many of 
them, but it is not with these that we are at present 
concerned. It is with the former class, and T am sure 
no one will deny that the foregoing figures are truly 
appalling. They simply mean that almost five per cent, 
of the adult female population of the country belong to 
that degraded, unhappy class known the world over as 
fallen women. 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S' 


111 


I have always believed that it ill becomes any man 
to speak in bitter terms of such unfortunates. They 
are objects of pity and commiseration rather than of 
reproach and blame. They are in many cases the un¬ 
happy victims of vicious men, to whom it is permitted 
to ruin, seduce, deceive and betray and still retain the 
world’s good opinion. They are made such and ki?*#. 
such by men, and they have become the Ishmaelites 
and outcasts of the race largely because pure and vir¬ 
tuous women the world over refuse to be brought 
down to the male level, and regard with loathing and 
horror a vice which degrades the sex as nothing else 
in the world can. 

I think that no one will deny, too, that these social 
outcasts are, as a class, the most miserable and unhappy 
of mortals. There is little happiness to be found in 
degradation, and when to degradation is added social 
ostracism, their portion is bitter, indeed. Some liberal 
theologian has defined hell to be “a place in the next 
world where a soul gets into its own class.” The 
brothel and the house of ill-fame seems to convey the 
best idea of hell, according to such a definition. The 
inmates, like the poor lost souls, cannot forget what 
they have been, what they might have been and what 
they are. They look upon the faces of the innocent 
children and remember the innocence and sinlessness 
of their own childhood days. They see the virtuous 
maiden, the honored wife, the well-beloved mother tak¬ 
ing their rightful places in the world, whilst they stand 
as beings apart and strangers to the sacred names and 
blessed ties of hearth and home. “There is no happi- 


112 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


ness, save in Thee, O God,” said Augustine, the sainted 
penitent. He might well have added: “The farther 
humanity has wandered from Thee, O God, the less of 
real happiness it has found and the more degraded 
morally, the more unhappy it has been.” Drunken 
orgies and transient pleasures of the senses will never 
fill the void in the heart which was made to love God 
and that which leads to God. There is no cup of for¬ 
getfulness powerful enough to deaden the longing for 
righteousness, which endures and asserts itself even in 
the soul of a “fallen woman.” 


From Out the Fold. 


I think it is safe to assume that a goodly percentage 
of such women have been Catholics by birth and early 
training. I refer to this not because of any hope which 
exists of reclaiming them, but because it is well for 
us from time to time to examine the causes which have 
contributed to their downfall, in order that we may 
point out the dangers to those who are liable to follow 
in their footsteps. One of the saddest things in con¬ 
nection with the whole subject is that so few of them 
are reclaimed. It is not that they inevitably lose their 
faith. Many of them retain their faith down to the 
last, and it is not an uncommon thing for pnests to be 
called on to administer the last sacraments of the 
Church in the abodes of sin. The chief difficulty so 
far has been in devising means whereby they may be 
reclaimed without such reclamation becoming a menace 
to the virtuous. The Sisters of the Good Shepherd 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


113 


have done more good in this direction than all the laws 
and legislators of the Christian world, but I have some¬ 
times felt that our Catholic wives and mothers might 
do a great deal more than they are doing to rescue at 
least those who have not yet grown old in sin. It is a 
strange fact that all modern legislation has failed utterly 
in every attempt at reform, and the regulation of 
the social evil still remains an unsolved problem in 
every city of the Christian world. 


White Slavery. 


It is at the same time an acknowledged fact that 
many of those women are veritable slaves, and would 
be glad of an opportunity to lead better lives. They 
are not all utterly depraved, and I have heard of many 
instances in which the better side of their nature 
stood nobly out for that which they believed to be 
right. A priest told me the other day of a famous 
courtesan who had on more than one occasion 
turned innocent young girls away fom her doors 
and had helped to support them until such time 
as they obtained honorable employment. The corrup¬ 
tion of the police in many cities constitutes one of the 
chief obstacles to effective reform. It is the lowest 
and most detestable form of graft, but it is a form 
which can be practiced with more or less impunity, as 
the victims frequently suffer in silence rather than in¬ 
flict their woes upon a hostile and unsympathetic 
public. There are good men and good women in every 
community who are ready to help those people to lead 



114 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


better lives if they only knew how. This is one of the 
world’s great problems. Its solution lies not so much 
in removing present evils as in waging an unceasing 
warfare against the causes of which the evil is the 
necessary and unfailing consequence. 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

DrinK and Temperance. 

A Hopeless Case. 

Habitual drunkenness has a characteristic not found 
in the ordinary vices of humanity. It is practically 
hopeless as far as reform is concerned. Drunkenness 
is a disease as well as a vice, and the ministrations of 
the doctor must precede those of the priest. 

I have seen it stated somewhere that there are more 
than a half million habitual drunkards in this country. 
I do not believe there is any way of arriving at the 
correct figures in making such an estimate, but grant 
for argument’s sake, that there is only half that num¬ 
ber, and the figures are still a sad commentary on the 
progress of religion and civilization. 

We are certainly safe in assuming that a goodly 
proportion of that army are Catholics by birth and 
early training. Their religious status is now a matter 
of little consequence. They are subjects for medical 
rather than religious care. The greater number of 
them will fill drunkards’ graves, and, as far as society 
is concerned, the sooner that takes place the better. 
It is not with such that the genuine advocate of 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


115 


temperance is concerned. It is with the youth of the 
land, with those who are now growing to manhood, 
and anything which helps to save them, no matter how 
misdirected, is a step in the right direction. 


Taking Long Chances. 

Personally, I would rather stand by the open grave of 
a Catholic young man than see him engage in the 
saloon business as it is conducted in America to-day. 
Apart from the spiritual danger arising from co-opera¬ 
tion in another’s sin, no form of casuistry can justify 
a business whose profits are largely dependent upon 
depriving defenseless women and innocent children of 
the means of livelihood. Add to this the necessity of 
consorting with the lowest elements of society, and 
the further necessity of aiding and abetting in the 
physical and moral destruction of so large a proportion 
of the young manhood of the country, and you have a 
few of the difficulties confronting a Catholic who is 
desirous of conducting a decent saloon. 

He may do it and save his soul, but it is an extremely 
hazardous undertaking. 

Time and again I have heard it asserted that a 
majority of the saloon-keepers are Catholics. This as¬ 
sertion we all know to be false, but we know at the 
same time that there are altogether too many of them in 
the business for their own good and for the good of 
the Church. It goes without saying that many of them 
try their best to conduct their place in conformity 



116 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


with the dictates of conscience, but for many of them 
the business has been a curse and a blight. 

It is difficult to treat a subject of this kind without 
indulging in extreme assertions. Fanaticism and 
wholesale denunciation are the stock-in-trade of nearly 
all those who assail the liquor traffic from pulpit and 
platform. As a result of those injudicious and unfair 
methods temperance agitators have become extremely 
unpopular. They proceed on the principle that all 
those who conduct saloons and all those who patronize 
them are lost souls, and that nothing is severe or harsh 
enough to say of them. Intoxicating liquors have 
been used from the beginning of the world, and will be 
used even until the end. Politics and politicians have 
made the saloon what it is to-day, and are still the 
greatest obstacles in the path of true reform. 

When we have devised some means whereby th< 
saloon can be kept out of politics, we will have solved 
one of the nation’s gravest problems. 


Too Much Rant. 


The common fault of our temperance literature is 
the prevalency of rant and the attempts to prove toe 
much, which usually ends in proving nothing. A 
certain amount of this may be expected in every form 
of agitation, but in matters affecting the gospel of total 
abstinence it is manifestly overdone. And yei we can¬ 
not conceal the fact that the advocates of temperance 
have done and are still doing a vast amount of good. 
It is evident at the same time to the least observant 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


117 


that there is still much to be done and much in which 
right-thinking men and women can have a share. A 
round of the saloons in any one of our large cities will 
furnish an earnest man with much food for serious 
thought. As he looks into the faces of hundreds of 
depraved human beings, he realizes better than ever 
before the terrible power for evil of the liquor traffic. 
The great army of unfortunates, the tramps, vagrants, 
criminals and useless members of society who make 
the saloons their headquarters constitute the strongest 
argument for total abstinence; but these object lessons 
have been supplied from the beginning and seem to 
have little effect in turning the world from the drink 
habit. 


A Striking Example. 


The reports of officers commissioned by the different 
nations to study the lecent Russo-Japanese War bear 
out the assertion that the chief cause of the Russian 
defeat lay in the habitual drunkenness of those in com¬ 
mand, both in the army and navy. It has been a prac¬ 
tice amongst the Russians from time immemorial to 
go into battle under the influence of copious draughts 
of Voodka. As a consequence neither officers nor men 
were a match for the sober Japanese. Universal drunk¬ 
enness amongst the Russian officers rendered them 
incapable of performing their duty at critical moments 
and the sober nation triumphed. It was a lesson which 
the Christian nations may well take to heart. Drunken 
soldiers and sailors are poor custodians of a country’s 



118 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


rights and liberties. It is sad to think thal after so 
many centuries of Christian teaching, the vice of in¬ 
temperance should exercise so firm a hold upon pro¬ 
fessedly Christian nations and should be in the midst of 
this era of intelligence and enlightenment the chief re¬ 
proach of those who claim to follow Jesus Christ. 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

Why He Gave It Up. 

Memory Remains. 


And what of him who has given up his religion en¬ 
tirely ? He may still call himself a Catholic, but cling¬ 
ing to the name is largely a matter of sentiment. At 
bottom he knows that to all intents and purposes he has 
placed himself without the Church’s pale. His faith 
in the old essentials has been greatly modified. He 
has slowly made a creed to fit his conduct. He has 
long ago ceased to observe the Church’s precept, but 
God in His mercy will not permit him to forget. 

The beautiful old Catholic prayers, which he learned 
at his mother’s knee were the last thing he gave up. 
The tender memories of that gentle mother who in¬ 
stilled into his heart the first lessons of Catholic piety, 
of an upright father whose life gave a sanction to the 
mother’s teaching—these are something that will not 
down. Sometimes now, through force of the old habit 
he finds himself tempted at night to kneel and ask God 
to bring back the innocence and peace and faith of 
childhood’s and boyhood’s years. 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


119 


He is not happy. His conscience has become seared 
and hardened, but troubled thoughts will arise and at 
times his soul is filled with a nameless terror. In the 
depths of the night and in the gray dawn of the early 
morning a swift and terrible vision of God’s judgment 
seat now and again rises before his eyes. These are 
the last calls to repentance, the signs that precede 
reprobation and final impenitence. Years ago he had 
read somewhere in a good book that if a man be lost it 
will be only after God has pursued him with eternal 
love and most persevering grace down to the last in¬ 
stant of his existence, only after He has exhausted 
every means which Divine ingenuity could devise save 
that of depriving him of man’s noblest attribute, free¬ 
dom itself. He clearly understands that if he become 
a castaway, he himself, not God, will be to blame. 
Sometimes he resolves to repent and retrace his steps, 
but sin and vice have entrenched themselves so firmly in 
his soul that they have become a part and parcel of hie 
very nature. Nothing but radical measures will avail 
him now and the Evil One will not easily yield up hii 
prey. He whispers into his heart the cry of the de¬ 
spairing “Too late! Too late !” God the All Holy, the 
All True, bids him turn to Him, even though his sins 
be as red as scarlet, and receive forgiveness. The 
Devil, the father of lies, convinces him that the hour of 
forgiveness and repentance is past. 


A Glorious History. 

The faith which he has, to all intents and purposes 
given up, was handed down to him as a precious heri- 





120 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


tage. It descended to him through the blood and teari 
of a thousand martyred generations. His ancestor* 
were treated as criminals and branded as felons because 
they dared to teach it to their children. They lost their 
earthly possessions sooner than compromise it. 
Honor and wealth and worldly prosperity waited 
upon apostasy, but they chose to be poor and ignorant 
and degraded and wretched for the sake of Christ. 
They refused the soup and the bogus bible of the 
famine days and saw their little ones die ot hunger 
rather than rob them of the true Bread of Eternal Life. 
Some of them stood in the dock and in the face of im¬ 
prisonment, exile and death proved steadfast and true 
and won for themselves a place amongst the red-robed 
martyrs. They went out from the land of their fathers 
as strangers and wanderers in order that they might 
be free to practice their faith. Their very love of 
religion and their devotion to their adopted country 
made them respected and honored in a free land. All 
this he knows, but to him who has given up God and the 
hope of heaven such precious memories have no 
meaning. 

He gave it up in the freest country in the world. He 
had no social advantage to seek, no political ends in 
view, no business prospects to subserve. His religion 
was no bar to political prominence or worldly pros¬ 
perity. It was not that he had learned in the world of 
science and letters some new truths that weakened the 
foundations of his faith. It was simply and solely 
because the Church of his fathers had insisted upon a 
standard of morals to which he was unwilling to con- 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


121 


form, and no matter what the pretexts alleged for his 
lack of fidelity it was because he chose to serve the 
world, the flesh and the devil in preference to obedi¬ 
ence and humility and self-sacrifice and purity of 
heart and all those virtues which are characteristic of 
the true disciple of Christ. And this is why he gave 
it up. It was God versus Mammon and Mammon 
triumphed. 


Beneath Contempt. 


I am not treating here of this weak-kneed time 
servers, who here and there gave up their religion be¬ 
cause they feared it might prove a bar to their social 
progress or material prosperity. People of this kind 
whom I have met have been pitiably ignorant both of 
their religion and of the conditions under which they 
live. As a rule they excite the ridicule of the non- 
Catholics whose favor they desire to gain. Ameri¬ 
cans, more than any other people in the world, respect 
and honor fidelity to principle. Even the least intelli¬ 
gent amongst them have long since learned that a 
Catholic who is faithful to his religious convictions ifc 
more worthy of trust than one who is ready to sell his 
birthright for a mess of pottage. The best and 
brainiest amongst them have come to understand that 
if there be real religion anywhere in the world it is to 
be found within the Catholic fold. They are not sur¬ 
prised when they hear of men like Newman and 
Manning and the greatest and best of the age turning 
to the Church and finding within it peace and security. 
They can scarcely conceal their contempt for those 



122 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


weak-minded individuals who desert the old Church 
because it is not the creed of the fashionable in cer¬ 
tain particular localities. It must be said, however, 
that apostasies of this kind are very raie nowadays. 
We hear of them, here and there, in a New England 
village, where the old Puritan spirit still prevails, or 
amongst poorly instructed foreigners who have sud¬ 
denly grown rich. The average American Catholic, 
no matter how fervent or how careless he may be, 
realizes fully that the flag of his country stands for 
religious freedom in the fullest sense of the term, and 
that apostates as a rule are such for revenue only. 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Church Extension. 


Tells the Story. 


The Methodist Church Extension Society recently 
issued an instructive litt e map of the United States, 
with a cross for every mission chapel which the so¬ 
ciety has founded or aided in founding all over the 
country, The figures which it presents are well cal¬ 
culated to set us a-thinking. We had been patting 
ourselves on the baci and pointing to our achieve¬ 
ments until we have come to believe that the Church 
in this country is the greatest ever. Up to January 
1, 1906, this society had 14,796 churches_to its 
credit. Of this number 776 had been built in Ne¬ 
braska, 1,028 in Kansas, over 700 in Iowa, and so on 
all along the line. And this immense aggregate 
represents the work of the Home Mission Society of 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


123 


only one non-Catholic sect. The others have not been 
idle. All of them have come to regard the care of 
the home missions—in other words, the care of their 
white American brethren as one of the most important 
departments of their work. They have gone out into 
the churchless communities of the country, built little 
churches and helped to support them wherever there 
was the faintest promise of future success. The 
results have justified the wisdom of such a policy. 
They have taken care of their own members, and 
have thus obtained many new recruits. 

This, however, was a matter in which they natur¬ 
ally had the advantage over us. Priests are not pre¬ 
pared for the sacred ministry in a week or a year. It 
is a slow and tedious process, and the Church from the 
earliest days in America was handicapped by a lack 
of priests. Then, too, there was a tendency to build 
up the big cities at the expense of the villages, towns 
and rural communities. When the Catholics were 
numerous enough and strong enough to take care of 
themselves in such places, all was well. When they 
were few and far between, and without courageous 
leaders to take the initiative they were abandoned to the 
inevitable. They fell away, not wilfully and design¬ 
edly, but unwillingly and regretfully, and all because 
they had neither church nor priest to keep alive in their 
hearts the truths and principles of*Catholic faith. The 
few priests who were in the field had enough to do in 
the missions assigned to them, without going out and 
hunting up the stray sheep in other localities. If the 
strays chose to remain in such places and bring up 
families, the result was a foregone conclusion. 


124 


‘THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


Catching Up. 


For fifty years the Church in this country has been 
engaged in a life-and-death struggle merely to hold 
its own. The great tide of immigration which swept 
across the American continent gave it all and more 
than it could do. The best it could do in many places 
was to make provision for the most pressing needs. 
As the country developed, new problems presented 
themselves, but the work was, somehow, always in 
advance of the workers. Much of it, as a conse¬ 
quence, had to go by default despite every effort on 
the part of the Church to cope with conditions as they 
presented themselves. 

I believe that it is of the most primary importance 
that our people should awake to the duty of saving our 
Catholics right here at home. Our greatest leakage 
in the past has been in the churchless villages, towns 
and rural communities all over the country. It is not 
the few families here and there th it count, but is is the 
enormous aggregate in thousands and tens of thou¬ 
sands of such places. It is too late in the Hast as far 
as the pioneers of the last generation are concerned, 
but it is not too late to make every effort to save the 
immigrants who are swarming here from European 
Catholic countries. • 

During the last fifty years the non-Catholic home 
mission societies have expended $300,000,000 in the 
work of building mission churches, and in supporting 
the clergymen who were assigned to such churches. 
Were it not for this missionary activity many of the 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


125 


non-Catholic sects would have suffered greatly from 
the standpoint of numbers. 

I believe that it serves no good purpose to dwell at 
length upon our losses. Our greatest losses in the 
past arose from a lack ofjpriests and churches. That 
lack is still being severe y felt all over the country. 
Our Catholic people must take a deeper interest in 
missionary work of every kind, but above all in the 
work which has for its purpose the saving of our 
Catholic people right here at home. Here is one 
of the greatest fields for missionary effort in the 
world to-day, and a field which up to the present has 
been too much neglected. 


Catholic Immigration no Menace. 


The Catholic immigrant is, as a rule, a very desirable 
citizen. He is God-fearing, honest, industrious and 
willing to work, and from such people the nation has 
nothing to fear. It is the native-born American who 
wants to live without work that is the real menace. 

The nation is face to face with much greater dan¬ 
gers than European pauper immigration. Political 
corruption, commercial dishonesty and the depraved 
morals of our wealthier classes are matters of much 
graver moment than the opening of our doors to the 
deserving poor of Europe. 

If the pohticians of fifty years ago had prevailed, 
the United States of today would have scarcely one- 
third of its present population, slavery would still exist 
and the aborigines would still occupy the trans-Missis¬ 
sippi country. The poor immigrant of fifty years ago 



126 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S” 


is to-day the brains and bone and sinew and, I may add, 
the conscience of the land. Fifty years from now the 
same thing wi J be said of the immigrant of to-day. 

The moral standard of the Catholic immigrant is, as 
a rule, much higher than that of the intellectual aris¬ 
tocracy which would bar him out. In this matter it 
behooves us to refrain from joining in an agitation 
having for its purpose the exclusion of men and 
women who come here for the same reasons for which 
our fathers and brothers came. Let it never be said 
of us th it the children of the poor and the oppressed 
who found the door of opportunity opened here, rose 
up to deny to others the rights and privileges accorded 
to their fathers. 


The Real Strays. 


The immigrant who strays from the fold by reason 
of strange conditions and surroundings has at least the 
semblance of an excuse. He is much less culpable 
than those who give the lie to their professions, 
though surrounded by everything calculated to keep 
them true and faithful. These are the real strays— 
the sorrow and reproach of the Church in every coun¬ 
try in the world. These are the wandering sheep of 
the house of Israel, whose salvation is the oae great 
problem in the life of the true pastor of souls. 

They live side by side with the faithful. They meet 
and mingle with them in the affairs of daily life. They 
still proclaim themselves believers, but fail to give out¬ 
ward expression to their inward belief. There is no 
possibility of estimating their numbers, but they are to 



“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


127 


be found everywhere. Every parish has its quota. 
In some localities the proportion is higher than in 
others, and in the larger cities, particularly in the West, 
they frequently outnumber the fervent and the devout. 
Everywhere they present the same characteristics. 
They come to church only at rare intervals, and seldom 
or never approach the sacraments. They eschew the 
good old practices of piety which are so important in 
keeping alive the true Catholic spirit. Amongst their 
non-Catholic neighbors they wish it to be understood 
that their Catholicity is of a broader and more liberal 
kind than that professed by the average member of the 
Church. If they have children, their religious instruc¬ 
tion is the last thing to receive attention. The wisdom 
and experience of nineteen centuries counts for little 
when it is a question of a Christian education. They 
are wiser than the Church universal, and its enact¬ 
ments are the result of old fogy ideas which are not 
worthy of serious attention. They are seldom to be 
found on the right side of any Catholic question on 
matters of faith and morals, and frequently are tainted 
with various forms of modern error. 


A Needed Campaign. 

The Church sends devoted missionaries to pagan 
lands whilst so important a field for missionary effort 
exists right here at our door. Perhaps it is because 
it entertains little hope for the conversion of people 
whose resistance of God’s grace is so flagrant and in¬ 
excusable. And yet it cannot be said that there is no 
hope. In nine cases out of ten their condition is the 



128 


“THE OUGHT TO BE’S 


result of human frailty and that gradual neglect into 
which any one is liable to fall in spiritual matters. 
There is very little positive malice in the world. Evil 
habits are formed much more readily than good ones. 
There is always hope, however, as long as life lasts. 
And I have frequently found that many of such people 
are merely waiting for a word of friendly encourage¬ 
ment, and that they are more eager to return to the 
paths of righteousness than they are to persevere in 
their evil course. 

This is a missionary work in which every earnest 
man and woman can co-operate. I have personally 
known sinners of long standing to be converted 
through the medium of innocent children, who scarcely 
realized the results of their childish efforts. When 
advice and exhortation and encouragement fail, we can 
at least have recourse to prayer, and particularly prayer 
to Mary, the Refuge of Sinners. When all hope 
seems lost, her love and compassion for the stray 
sheep will interfere in wondrous ways to save them 
from the very jaws of perdition. 

I would like to see a campaign to win back oui 
“ought-to-be” Catholics inaugurated everywhere 
throughout the country. It is a movement in which 
priests and laity can cheerfully unite, and one worthy 
of the best efforts of every earnest lover of the faith. 

I saw, the other day, a little leaflet issued by the 
Catholic Total Abstinence Union. The motto was, 
“You can win one at least. Why not do it?” That 
would be a good motto for such a campaign. There 
are few who cannot win one soul to God if they will 
only try. And why not begin here and now ? 















DEC 28 1906 

























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